Salt’s report was the size of War and Peace. Great. Folks started settling in for the long haul, and I was impressed by everyone’s patience. I honestly think it’s the most fun the caretaker ever had, explaining to a roomful of trapped, if not rapt, society members about how he’d been roused twice on the night of January 27th by a series of strange green lights in the sky.
In the middle of his report on the first week in February, I lifted my head to see Poe looking at me. When he was sure he had my attention, he mimed taking a plate down off the shelf and breaking it over his knee. I stifled a surprised laugh. Where had that come from?
He held my gaze for one moment more, then morphed back into Secretary Poe, serious as a study hall proctor, paying attention to Salt’s report as if the dead bird the caretaker had found on his front stoop the morning of February 24th was indeed the portent of doom he claimed it to be.
At long last, the old man wrapped it up and we spilled out of the stuffy stucco box and headed to dinner, as famished as death row inmates with a last minute reprieve.
“Well, that was long and pointless,” Demetria said.
“Yeah. At this point, our cabin could have been trashed by Kadie Myer, Kurt Gehry, conspiracy theorist nuts, aliens, marauding pirates, or just really bitter squirrels.” Jenny sighed. “Who decided this trip was a good idea?”
Clarissa shrugged. “But I do think Salt had a point. We need to be on our guard. Obviously, people have trespassed here, and I doubt they’re afraid to do damage. I think the patrols are a good idea.”
“They’re a good way to keep us from getting sleep,” Harun said.
“I second that. If I wanted to march around in the dark, I’d have signed up for ROTC,” said Ben. “I came here to relax.”
“How much relaxing are you going to do once they trash your stuff?” Jenny asked.
“Touché.”
“He was right about not wandering around alone, too,” Kevin said. “If I had anyplace else to go, I’d leave Cavador Key tomorrow. I didn’t expect us to be under attack here.” So much for this being a group bonding experience.
“Well, you can thank Gehry,” Demetria said. “That’s why there’s so much focus on the island right now.”
“Then why isn’t it Gehry getting attacked?” George asked. “Since when do I have to be that bastard’s scapegoat?”
“You, George?” Clarissa said. “Care to show me your new bright orange purse?”
Malcolm and Poe sat on the other side of the room during this dinner, and I made sure to sit with my back to them so I wouldn’t stare. But I swear, throughout the meal, it was as if I had an internal radar beeping out Poe’s position. Now he was at the salad bar, now getting a refill on his coffee, now visiting the table of another patriarch. Beep beep beep.
This called for chocolate. I was pouring hot fudge over my ice cream when the beeps started up again. Proximity alert.
“You’re drowning your scoop,” came his voice from behind me.
“Well, you know me and drowning,” I replied without looking back, and put down the bottle of sauce.
His next words were almost too soft to catch. “I’m sick over what that spray paint said about you.”
That was unexpected. No, that was…mind-blowing. I was glad I was looking away, since it took me a second to recover. At last, I turned toward him. “There was stuff all over, about all of us.”
“They knew about yesterday.”
“Yeah, imagine that. It’s all anyone could talk about.”
“So someone sneaking around could have overheard it.”
“Why do you think it was an intruder? You know very well—”
“The campfire. The tape recorder. Amy, someone is infiltrating this island.”
I rolled my eyes. “But they’re harmless, like you said. The person who trashed the room is sitting right over there. You know it.”
“I’ve spoken to both of the Myers. They aren’t my favorite people, but they aren’t violent, either. This was violent.”
“You take an awful lot upon yourself, you know.”
“Yeah. I do.”
“What was up with the meeting today? Why were you acting like you were in charge?”
“Because I am.”
“What does that mean?”
He blinked. “I’m in charge. I called the meeting, I ran it. I’m in charge.”
“You’ve barely graduated.”
“So? I’m on the board of the Trust.”
“You never told me that.”
“Every Secretary is the year after he graduates. But I was in the doghouse all last semester, remember? I couldn’t even go to TTA meetings. Now, ever since Gehry’s been out, I’ve finally been able to do my job properly. And,” he added, “I don’t exactly tell you everything about my life.”
Or anything at all. I returned to my seat and wolfed down my ice cream so fast, I almost choked.
I’m sick over what that spray paint said about you.
Poe had called the meeting. He’d talked to everyone on the island. Even Kurt Gehry, whom he had more reason to hate than the rest of us combined, considering how Gehry had canceled his White House internship and shoved him off the TTA board. While we were busy scrubbing paint off the mattresses, he’d conducted a full investigation. For me.
George was wrong. Poe wasn’t a jerk. But he wasn’t like anyone I knew, either.
My internal radar indicated that Poe had left the dining room, and soon after, the girls followed suit, heading back to our semi-clean cabin to finish surveying the damage and make plans for tomorrow, since a yacht trip was clearly off the table. (The regular meeting had been usurped by the emergency summit, and no one had any interest in returning to the stuffy tomb that night.) I found I was too antsy to sit, though, so I grabbed my towel. “I’m going to take a shower.” My allotted daily ten-minute shower.
Clarissa looked up from the remains of her purse, which, if not ruined by the paint, had definitely been destroyed by a thorough if unproductive scrubbing. “Wait for one of us. You shouldn’t be going anywhere alone at night.”
“I’m fine. I’m just going to the compound.”
“But you have to walk through the woods.”
“Jesus, Clarissa. Let the poor girl take a shower alone.” Demetria rolled over and glared at the ceiling.
And with that, I stepped out into the night. Though as soon as I passed beyond the circle of light cast by the cabin windows, I shivered. Maybe Clarissa was right.
No. That was silly. There were no intruders. I didn’t care what Poe said about someone targeting me. Those slurs had been written about all four of the Diggirls. And I’d seen Kadie playing Monopoly in the dining hall when we’d left, so I was safe. Yet the deeper I walked into the woods, the more my ears strained for every bit of sound. Every rustle of leaves or snap of twigs. Even the sound of the shells crunching beneath my feet gave me the creeps. There had, after all, been that campfire, though Ben insisted it was more than a week old.
Nevertheless, I was practically running by the time I reached the compound yard. Yellow lights shone from all the windows of the main house, from the boys’ cabin, and even from a tiny porch light over the entrance to the tomb. Salt hadn’t turned off the generators yet, but the shower house was dark. Natch.
Inside, it was cool and shadowy, and the fluorescent bulb I flipped on was of the variety that gave out only a dim, flickering, violet-tinted swath of illumination. Horror movie lighting. Perfect.
A quick wash later, I was wrapping up in the towel when I did hear something outside the window. A definite footstep, then a few more. The door opened.
“Hello?” I called. It was just someone else looking for a late-night shower. Surely. I pushed the curtain aside and tiptoed into the changing area. Maybe they were scared, too.
I tried again. “Hello? It’s Amy here.”
A figure stepped from the shadows. “I know.”
14.
Sea Change
*
* *
I didn’t have time to draw breath before hands clamped down on either side of my face and I was pushed roughly against the wall. Fingers tangled in my hair, protecting my skull from the tile behind my head.
“Jamie…” I cried out, as he pressed his mouth to mine.
Poe lifted his head. “Aww, you called me Jamie.”
“I don’t have that much money left,” I said, and pulled him close.
The wall was cold against my wet back, and the knobby weave of the towel cut into my breasts and rubbed hard against my belly and thighs. The fact that, except for said towel, I was completely naked didn’t bother me at all. Poe was dressed in slacks and a tee, and I twisted my hands in the fabric of the shirt, balling my fingers into fists as if I could tear it from his shoulders. His kisses were fast and frenetic, moving from my lips to my throat and back again, and he supported all of my weight between his body and the wall. I hooked my ankle behind his knee and arched my back.
He moaned a bit into my mouth and I almost lost it, then and there. This was beyond ridiculous.
1) We were in the shower house. The very open, very public shower house.
2) We were not at the point where he should be kissing me in a towel.
3) We shouldn’t be getting to that point, ever, what with all the bickering and general not-getting-along.
4) Being stalked is not generally one of my turn-ons.
But my body responded to none of that as much as it responded to the way Poe was sucking stray droplets of water off my collarbone. I sank a bit on the wall, which put the rest of my body into a very interesting position in relation to his thigh.
Okay, this was swiftly getting out of hand. How recently had I promised to instill a moratorium on the Y chromosome? “Wait, wait,” I gasped.
He pulled away, doing a bit of gasping of his own.
I tightened the knot on my towel, since I wasn’t sure what else to do with my hands. “What the hell? What was that?”
He smiled, a smirk so wolfish that I thought for a second he’d been taking lessons from George Harrison Prescott. “I wanted to make sure. That this afternoon wasn’t a dream.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I know that now.”
“But this is—what are we doing?”
“I have no idea,” he admitted.
“All we did today was fight. Fight and make out.”
“One more thing than we usually do.”
“That doesn’t work for me,” I said. “I’ve spent the whole afternoon so confused.”
“Yeah. I know the feeling.”
“Well, you’re not helping. What was that thing in the tomb?”
“What thing?”
I rubbed my head. My hair was in mats. “You know. The plate thing.”
Recognition dawned on his shadowed face. “It was a joke.”
“You don’t make jokes.”
“You laughed. I wanted to make you laugh.” He gave a little self-mocking sigh, as if the very idea of going out of his way to amuse me baffled him as well. “I wanted to make you look at me. You’d been ignoring me all day.”
Ha! I almost shouted it. “That couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Up against the wall, once again. And oh my Persephone, it was marvelous. But once again I pushed him away. You know, after a bit.
“We need to talk,” I insisted, one hand holding up my towel, the other warding him off.
“I object to that plan on several levels.”
“No. We need to talk about this.” I hesitated, took a deep breath. “Before it can continue.”
Now he looked interested. “What shall I tell you? That I spent the entire day thinking about the many ways I messed up out there on the beach? I mean, you threw yourself at me and I still fucked it up.”
“I did not throw myself at you,” I exclaimed, appalled. “Take that back.”
“Done.” He smiled down at me, pushed some hair out of my face, and then shocked me anew. “And then, this evening…it’s been one too many things happening to you recently.”
“This happened to all of the Diggirls.”
“Being called a slut or having your computer trashed is not the same as a death threat. And that’s what you got. A death threat. You, Amy. Not the rest of them. On top of yesterday, on top of this whole semester…”
“That was Dragon’s Head.”
“What if this is Dragon’s Head?”
“It’s not.”
“And you know that how?”
Because I trusted that Felicity would keep her word. She’d promised Brandon she’d stop. If he chose her. And he did, but it had nothing to do with me. He chose her because he loved her. He loved her, and he did not love me anymore. I blinked away the tears forming in my eyes before Poe could see them. He’d already seen me cry too much over another boy. “Do you really think they’d devote their last Spring Break to tormenting me?”
“Sounds like a pretty decent time to me. Isn’t that what I’ve been doing?”
I pursed my lips. “Define ‘torment.’”
He looked almost ready to grin at that one, but clearly wasn’t finished with the lecture. “Someone’s on this island, Amy, and you’re way too visible. To the patriarchs, to the conspiracy theorists, to Dragon’s Head. And yeah, you’re the one I worry about. I’m sure the others are lovely girls—except Jenny, who needs to be taken down a peg or two—but you’re the one…”
He didn’t finish that thought. Thank God.
“I can’t believe you’re taking this so lightly!” he said, changing tactics. “Are you that accustomed to prompting death threats that you take them all in stride?”
“I didn’t think of it as a death threat!” I cried. Until now, of course. “They just trashed our cabin. Nothing violent. You’re the one who keeps talking about violence. You’re the only person who is taking that spray paint seriously.”
“Yeah, and that’s also unlike you. Aren’t you the girl who came to me last year because of a trashed room?”
“No, I went to you because of a missing girl!”
“Well, I’m not going to wait for you to go missing.” Said with the utmost finality.
That made me pause for just a moment, but I regrouped. “There is no reason to think this was anything more than standard, senseless vandalism, no matter who’s responsible.”
Poe just stood there for a second, as if weighing his words. “There’s more. Stuff I didn’t say at the meeting.” He grabbed my hand. “I have to show you something.”
I pulled back. “Let me get dressed first.”
“Fine.” But he just stood there, arms crossed, dark hair falling into his eyes.
“Um, could you please turn around or something?”
A ghost of a smile. “Make me.”
I yanked the shower curtain shut between us.
Combed and dressed, but still damp, I let Poe lead me across the compound and down the path to the docks. Our journey was silent, but with none of the awkwardness that had marked our last walk together. Perhaps we stood more closely than usual, but otherwise, there was no sign of the heat that had so recently consumed us both.
When we reached the boats, I drew back. “This is as far as I go.”
“The boat won’t leave the dock. I wouldn’t even know how to do that. Get on.”
I groaned and followed him aboard the smaller boat. Poe picked up a flashlight from a box in the cabin and walked over to the railing. “Look at this.” He knelt and shined the flashlight at the railing. I saw a series of scratches in the paint around the hole that, until recently, had held the chain in place. The chain I’d broken through as soon as I fell against it.
“What am I looking at?”
“Someone stripped the joint.”
“It just wore thin.”
“No. You can tell by the markings. It was a screwdriver or something. I’ve built enough porches and trellises in my time to tell the difference. This thing was going to blow the second so
meone put weight on it.”
I made a face. “There’s no way that anyone could have known it was going to be me. It was just a coincidence that I was standing by this rail.”
“But you’re the only one who could have been really hurt if you did fall.”
“Anyone can get hurt falling off a boat.”
“You’re the only one who can’t swim.”
I stared at him and everything clicked into place. “Jamie—”
“And there’s more,” he said.
I crouched beside him and cupped my hand around his chin.
“I have to show you the life jacket. I—”
I shook my head and kissed him. “Stop.”
When I opened my eyes, his expression was confused.
“No one is after me. I promise. I know you feel guilty about scaring me at the initiation last spring. But stop beating yourself up about it. I’m fine. I’m not angry at you anymore.”
“This isn’t about last spring.”
“Yes it is. You’re the only person who spends any time at all thinking about my phobia. And it’s making you read into things.” I stood and brushed off my knees. “And that’s me telling you this. The Diggers’ resident conspiracy theorist…and pain in the ass. So you know it’s the truth.”
He swept to his feet and walked across the deck. I stood there, waiting, letting the night breeze blow around my face and cool my skin. Poe leaned against the far rail, staring out to sea and watching the play of starlight on the water. After a while, I walked across the deck and joined him. Minutes passed.
“I just kept thinking that if I hadn’t…done that to you…” he said at last. “That maybe you wouldn’t hate me.”
“That’s silly,” I said. “I hated you for much better reasons than that.”
“But not anymore?”
I looked down at our hands, beside one another on the rail, and twined mine in his. “Nope. Not anymore.”
“Because of yesterday?”
“Stop asking me that.” I squeezed his hand once, then let it go. “Ask the real question.”
He was silent for a long time. “Fine. What is this?”
I shut my eyes tight against the sight of the water and the night, but I could hear the sea slapping against the side of the boat. I could hear Poe breathing, and over it all, I could hear the blood rushing in my ears.
Rites of Spring (Break) Page 18
