I shrugged, the end of my line jangling. “You guys seem good together.”
He flicked his fishing pole. The string settled slowly over the water. “I don’t want to get married for a long time.”
I’d begun to sweat. “Why not?”
“Just forget it, man.”
“If you don’t want to marry her…and you’re going to Louisiana…then why are you together?” Marry her, all right? Get obsessed with her. She seemed pretty awesome, but what did I know? The brightness of the lake annoyed me.
“She’s my girl, man. We have a kid together.” He began to circle the lever on his reel. “If things go bad between us, believe me, child support would be a real drag.” He frowned and threw the hook out a second time, a zipping sound.
“Okay—wait, what’s child support?”
Danny scoffed. When he noticed I was serious, he frowned. “The government making me pay to support Nell, way more than I already do. The percentages are insane.”
“Okay, so you should get married, then. Avoid all that.” My hands were extended, palms up.
He made a face. “Are you gonna cast?”
Child support savings, the occasional ass grab—his perfect relationship? “Cast?” I said.
He wagged his hands, as if that helped. I stared at the contraption before me. An image of me cracking the reel into pieces flashed in my head.
I stood and copied what Danny had done, hard, but when I flicked my hands, the pole went flying and landed into the lake with a loud dunk. Ripples spread from the spot. I stood, and with a grunt, I jumped into the lake. For a second, the water felt good, really good, and then Danny started to yell.
“Hey! What the hell are you doing?”
All I had to do was grab the fishing pole.
I hadn’t expected the water to be so cold. I hadn’t expected to begin sinking. I wasn’t a god anymore, and that day in the lake I faced the reality that I could die, right there, before getting Phoebe or Karma or myself out of this mess.
With him watching.
I didn’t know how to swim, but I could claw, and kick, and try to save myself. Foam sped toward the surface, dark water all around me. Thrashing. Twisting. Nothing helped.
The sound of Danny jumping in should have been a relief, but I didn’t want him to be the one to save me. He grabbed my shirt.
We burst through the surface.
“I’m fine,” I said. Coughing, snorting, I tried to act cool.
“Grab the life vest, man.” Water sprayed in my eyes when he threw it. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t say thank you, I owe you one, nothing. I couldn’t stop feeling angry, this proud anger I wasn’t even sure why I felt.
He shook his head. “That was an expensive pole, too. You got three hundred bucks?”
I clambered into the boat, breathing hard. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your money.”
He’d saved my life. Pretty sure my dignity was somewhere in the lake, not just his overpriced pole. And the truth about what my arrow had done? I was practically drowning in it. He didn’t want Karma. He didn’t want to be a dad. He just wanted to be what he already was—a teenager with no responsibilities. The kind of guy who went skinny-dipping without a second thought.
It was a sad story. For Karma to love someone that much—and work that hard—for nothing.
I ripped my soaked T-shirt over my head and wrung it out. The water had a slight mineral scent. Two more truths. One: he didn’t deserve her.
The second truth was a lot harder to admit, since there was no hope with her being under the arrow’s spell. Danny was her everything, except what she deserved.
An eagle with a white tail and head and a black body coasted from a pine across the water’s surface. I watched it as dread filled me.
She deserved to be loved.
“So…you and Danny talked about everything, then?”
The moment Jen spoke, I could have sliced the tension between us with one of the butter knives she was wrapping with paper napkins at work. We hadn’t discussed Danny’s scholarship at school. We hadn’t discussed Thursday’s party. Yet here we were, Saturday morning at Country Café, me waiting for Danny’s to-go order, her with a heaping basket of silverware. How much longer could a double cheeseburger take?
“Yes,” I said. “We talked.” I meandered over to the bulletin board where locals stuck copies of their business cards, reading each one.
“I’m really sorry about…” Jen trailed off. Wrap, wrap, wrap.
“About what?”
I turned to stare at her. She had these full lips—pretty, I guess, but they were dry and ugly-looking when she pursed them like that.
“Sorry about everything,” Jen continued. “Wist. Plans changing.” Her brown ponytail bobbed with each word. “I really thought you were going to do it this time. You know, go to New York.”
This time.
Her little jabs about my past weren’t going unnoticed.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I said carefully. I hugged the sweatshirt I was wearing. “I’ve decided to go to school near Louisiana. I found a really good school.” The parts I left out: an okay school; a school nearby, as in Mississippi, two and a half hours from Danny’s campus. “Who knows what the future will bring? Maybe we’ll all go to New York in a year or two.”
Her expression was smooth, no reaction to my words. “I thought you’d be pissed.”
The café was empty and suddenly too big and convenient for the topic. She grabbed a handful of silverware, the metal dinging sharply.
“I know I’d be pissed if my baby’s father enrolled in a school ten states away without talking to me about it.”
“He got a big scholarship,” I mumbled.
Her mouth parted slightly, a fork in one hand, napkin in the other.
“Is that how he put it?”
Her words seemed to stab me. I hated that once again, she was acting as if she knew a secret, my boyfriend’s secret, some members-only club I hadn’t joined.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said quickly.
“Jen…”
“Seriously, it’s nothing. You worry too much.” She made a snapping sound with her tongue and something in me snapped, too.
I faced her with a pounding heart. “Yeah, well, maybe I should worry. Maybe I should worry that you’re talking to my boyfriend and going to parties with my boyfriend when it’s obvious you’re not my friend.” I towered over her, my fingertips supporting me on the vinyl countertop. I tried to breathe normally. I hated her lips.
“Danny wanted me to go. I can’t control what he says.”
“I thought Aaryn invited you.”
“Who?” She fit her mouth around the straw in her water glass and took a long pull. “Oh. Him. Yeah, he was there, but we asked him to come along. Not the other way around.”
I stood there for a long time. The motor for the pie display whirred, one piece of apple the only slice left. The chair grated as Jen got up and walked to the bathroom. The door closed with a gentle click.
Follow her. Don’t let her make you feel small.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t cross the line she’d drawn, even if it meant knowing.
To know felt like the worst thing ever, and things between me and Danny were okay again. Barely okay. I guess he’d acted a little weird when I told him about the Mississippi idea. I smiled shakily as the cook handed me a to-go container and paid for the burger, my hands trembling.
Is that how he put it?
I burst through the door of the restaurant with a snap. Shoved the burger on the passenger seat of my car and slammed the door. The crash of the river was like static in my ears. Lakefield Dam was at the bottom of the hill behind the café, inviting me to escape. I walked toward it with heavy steps, unzipping my sweatshirt as if freeing shackles, following the sound, feeling dizzy. My eyes watered from the sunlight. They stung. I could leave Jen’s words at the river, pushing them out and down and gone.
Over the years, the dam had become a canvas for angst-ridden teens. Foam streaked the edges of the bank. I felt like spray-painting my own thoughts on the concrete, thinking Jen is a bitch would fit in perfectly between Love sucks and the anarchy symbol.
Her words stuck to me like paint.
I really thought you were going to do it this time. You know, go to New York.
No one understood love. If they did, they’d realize Danny and I had to stay together. Yes, I loved New York, and I loved dancing, but the desire to stay with him was always stronger. So strong I didn’t understand it. Sometimes nothing I felt made sense.
But he was stupid, my boyfriend, inviting her to a party. I squeezed the locket around my neck, the one he’d given me, and pulled. The chain wasn’t hard to break, a moment of the metal digging into my neck. I threw the necklace as hard as I could into the river, the gold reflecting the sun.
A second later, I ran into the water, skimming the river bottom. I lost my balance and fell forward, catching myself on a sharp rock. Blood oozed from the cut. Stupid. Stupid. I cried out and sucked the end of my finger.
“Are you okay?”
Aaryn stood on the bank, the sun highlighting every detail of him. His olive-toned skin. Black hair and short sideburns that angled an inch below each earlobe.
“No.” A chill raced up my arm. “I lost my necklace.” And then I grimaced, feeling embarrassed. My shoulders sagged.
“I think it landed over here.” He stepped in ahead of me, dipped into the current and held out my necklace, water rolling down his hand. “Found it.”
“Oh! Thank you.” Water sloshed as I fumbled to take it and the locket nearly fell again, but his reflexes were good. He cupped my hand from underneath. We stood like that for a few seconds, his palm supporting mine, slippery with river but warm to the touch. Up close he had blue eyes, and there was a slight crease at each corner when he smiled. A dark freckle, one spot, marked the right corner.
His hand fell away.
“I can’t believe you found it,” I said. The river churned around our feet. Downstream the tan water turned blinding white as the sun hit it. “How are you, by the way? Danny told me about the lake. That must have been so scary.”
Aaryn trudged to the bank. “I’m fine.” He stared at the long grass, which was matted by our footsteps. “Totally fine.”
“I’m glad you’re both okay.”
He held out his hand. I took it, and he drew me up the hill a couple of steps.
“Hey, did Danny come over last night? On your anniversary?”
“Oh, it got to be too late.” I waved my hand. “I was writing a report, so it worked out fine.”
“Sorry,” Aaryn said. “He…should have stopped by.”
My eyebrow raised. “You’re sorry?” I shook my head and tried to make my laugh sound real. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
“I just feel bad that he was with me when he could have been with you. Should have been.”
“Why did you lie to me?” My voice came out in a rush.
“Lie to you?”
“You said you invited Jen to the party.”
“Oh.” He shifted from one foot to the other.
“Danny was the one who invited her, wasn’t he?”
“I honestly don’t know. I found them together. You just seemed so upset, and then you said it was your anniversary the next day, and—I don’t know.”
“So you thought lying would make me feel better?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
Pine trees grew along the riverbank, hundreds of them. I was tired of seeing the same kind of trees. Aaryn reached for the necklace in my hand. The chain itself hadn’t broken, though the clasp was stuck wide open. He gestured for me to turn around.
“Why’d you throw your locket into the river?” he asked. I bowed away from the sound of his voice in my ear.
He fastened it around my neck, fingertips brushing my skin. I had ripped it off on impulse, the way I’d done too many things in the past year, making a fool of myself. I could add Aaryn to the list of people who’d gotten to see the real Karma, the dance prodigy who couldn’t help spinning out of control if the circumstance allowed. I was a lot like the necklace. Flying through the air, not knowing where I’d land.
“It’s complicated. And stupid.”
“I can handle complicated.”
I hugged myself and shook my head, blinded for a second by the sun. “I better get going. Danny is probably wondering where I am.” A panicky feeling rose in my stomach as I imagined asking him about the party. He wasn’t a morning person. Maybe I shouldn’t.
“Can I walk with you?”
“It’s a free country.” A cliché I hated.
“Free country?” He turned on his foot with one eyebrow up.
“Yeah. You know.” I shrugged. His face tipped a little, waiting for my answer. “Uh, America?”
“Oh.” He chuckled loudly, then cleared his throat. “Right. ‘Free country.’ ” He made air quotes.
We walked toward the parking lot in silence, not the kind of silence that pressed against my chest but a safe, expanding silence. We were practically strangers—the word strange fit him pretty well at times—but being with him didn’t feel awkward.
“I shouldn’t have lied,” he said. He shook his head. “You deserve better than that.”
“Oh, it’s okay. Seriously, I’m over it.”
At my car, we looked at each other for a while, and for a second I wished he’d hug me, the way little kids are supposed to say sorry, which had to be the most stupid thing on top of all the other stupid things.
“Bye, Karma.”
When he was gone I called Peyton.
—
We decided an emergency Auntie Night was a must. I drove to Shining Waters after dropping off Danny’s burger—he hadn’t felt good enough to eat it—and Peyton came outside to get Nell; she was wearing yoga pants and one of Nick’s baggy T-shirts. Her hair was a mess. She hugged me. “I can’t believe Jen said all that.” Nell was really happy to see her, clutching the shirt, hands all over her face. “Talk about passive-aggressive,” she mumbled, because Nell was gripping her bottom lip.
“I’m so sick of being lied to and explained to and ditched.” I grabbed my three bags and slammed the car door. “I tried talking to Danny, but he didn’t feel good.”
“Oh, whatever. You deserve to know what’s going on. What the hell? What is going on? How weird is it that Aaryn would lie for him? How weird is it that Danny would go anywhere with her?”
It felt so good to have Peyton on my side. Also, judging by the look on her face, frightening.
“I don’t want Juliette to hear any of this,” I said. I held my phone.
“Okay.”
The morning had been awful, with Jen being such a bitch and Danny barely thanking me for the food. Me feeling weird about Aaryn. But I was safe again. I was loved.
We sat on the porch steps as I scrolled for his contact.
“Put it on speaker,” Peyton whispered, then snuggled Nell to see if she was in a noisy mood. Danny didn’t answer his cell phone. I hesitated, then called him at home.
My response to his mother’s answer felt all too familiar.
“Oh, he’s not home?”
“He went somewhere with Dmitri a little while after you left.” Judy was the type of mother who hadn’t taught her sons not to spit in public or lie. Yet when they needed her she had the ferocity of a mother bear. “He’s been busy.” Her voice had a tinny sound through the phone.
Peyton rolled her eyes and shook her head.
I angled the phone close to my mouth. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“He didn’t tell me.” She clucked her tongue. “Oh, honey, is something wrong? You don’t sound like yourself.”
“I really need to talk to him.”
She paused. “He’s not gonna get away with avoiding you. We can’t let him.”
&nb
sp; Mother Bear had taken my side. I smiled and shifted on the step, giving Peyton a satisfied nod. “Did he tell you I’m going to apply for the dance program at Southern Miss? We’ll still be able to see each other every weekend.”
“Hmm. Danny loves you girls.”
Peyton may have rolled her eyes again, but I pretended not to notice. “Hopefully I’ll get that scholarship. Danny said he would help me with my performance, but—”
The sound of a cellophane bag being torn open rustled loudly in the background. “You’ve got savings, don’tcha?”
I sat up, the step hard beneath me. “A little.”
“What about your mom? Doesn’t she have some sort of college fund set up for you girls?”
It seemed like an odd question coming from a mother who didn’t have anything like that set aside for her children.
“I have to pay my own way.” Was she really on my side? “Hopefully Danny can help out with money this summer,” I added. Peyton nudged me, grinning.
“He’ll be eighteen in May. It would be hard for him to keep up with his football training if he had to get a full-time job. Are you thinking you’re going to file for child support?”
“Oh! I didn’t mean that. No. I meant he could get something part-time, you know, just to help with some of the bills, help us save.” I swallowed and focused on the group of birds clustered in the tree across the yard. They were eating some kind of seed from the pods.
Judy bark-laughed. “He has to save up for his own college, ya know.”
“But he already got that scholarship.”
“A one-thousand-dollar scholarship? Really, honey, you think that’s going to cover college?”
My heart pounded. One thousand dollars? That was all? Peyton’s mouth hitched open. I stood and clicked off speaker as I tromped down the stairs. The phone against my cheek felt sticky. “I thought…He made it sound like it was a big scholarship.” I slid my hand across the hood of my car for support. Birds chirped from the trees. “It’s only a thousand dollars?”
“Better than nothing.”
“Oh.” I inhaled sharply. Mama Bear’s tone was scaring me. “Then it makes even more sense for him to get a job. He could start looking for a job now, maybe find something that’s a couple of hours a week.” I could hardly believe myself. I could almost picture her nostrils splayed, a fake smile on her face. Mama Bear probably wanted to paw me dead.
Arrows Page 7
