The Island of Dragons (Rockpools Book 4)

by Gregg Dunnett

  The kid whose shot it was bent down to take it. He didn’t see the line, even a pro-player wouldn’t. He was just going to punt it hard and hope for the best.

  “Hundred bucks you don’t make that shot.” The words came from neither of the two players, but a handsome, blond-haired man, taller and bigger built than either of the kids playing.

  “What?” Ginger hair stood up from the table, sounding scared.

  “Hundred bucks. You. Don’t. Make. That. Shot.”

  “What?”

  “Is that the only word you know?”

  “What? No. Heck. No. I just mean I don’t wanna bet with you.”

  “Why not? You a pussy?”

  Ginger hair looked to his friend for support, but he’d backed away, happy this wasn’t happening on his shot. “No. I’m just… I’m just playing a game here.”

  “Yeah, well I’m playing a game too. Come on. Hundred bucks.” James smiled, with a bit more warmth in it, and he pulled a wad of notes out of the pocket of his jeans. He held one up. But the kid shook his head.

  “No. I ain’t… I don’t wanna…”

  “Come on…” James peeled off another note, then three more. “Here’s five hundred bucks. But that says I can make it for you.”

  “What? You? You wanna take the shot now?”

  “Yeah.” James nodded, waving the notes a little closer to the ginger haired kid now.

  Then the other player got involved. “Look man, how about you just leave it, huh?” His voice had come out squeakier than he intended, and his eyes darted nervously about. He looked like he regretted opening his mouth already. James turned to look at him.

  “It’s alright little fella. Your buddy here’s his own man. He can decide for himself if he’s interested or not.” The ginger kid’s eyes were fixed on the cash.

  “Five hundred bucks says I can make that shot.” James repeated, his voice soft. “Against your one hundred.”

  The ginger kid paused.

  “You wanna bet five hundred bucks you can pot this black, and if you make it I only have to give you one hundred?”

  James nodded.

  “And if you don’t make it, you’ll give me the five hundred?”

  “That’s it. You got it.”

  “What are you doing Paul? Let’s just get outta here?” The second player said. But the ginger haired kid – Paul – wasn’t looking at him. He glanced at the table. At the shot he’d been about to fire off, with no hope of making. Even if this crazy guy was some kind of pool shark, there was still no way he could make the shot. It was basically impossible. Besides, this was now a challenge to his masculinity. Why should he run away? The way he’d done his whole life.

  “Alright. But put the money down. So I know you’re not gonna go back on it.”

  “Absolutely. No problem with that.” James took the notes and pinned them to a table under his half-empty bottle of beer. “Now show me yours.”

  “What?” The ginger haired Paul froze.

  “Show me you’ve got a hundred. After all, you’re gonna have to give it me in thirty seconds.”

  Paul didn’t believe this, but he nodded and fumbled in his pocket for the wallet which James had already noticed, and from it he pulled out a note of his own. He showed it, tentatively to James, who waved his hand at the table.

  “Put it down.” He said, as if talking to a slightly simple child.

  Paul looked to his friend, who shook his head, lightly, so that James wouldn’t notice him. But Paul turned away, and did what he was told. For a second all of their eyes were on the table with the cash, then they all slipped back to the other table. With the near-impossible shot.

  “May I?” James held out his hand for ginger hair to hand him the pool cue.

  “Oh sure. Sorry.”

  James bent down to line up the shot. He pantomimed for a bit, his whole arm shaking like he couldn’t control it, and then he straightened up again, to chalk the end of the cue. While he did that Oscar silently approached the table where the cash was pinned, just as James lined up the shot again, but this time gave a huge sneeze. Ginger haired Paul couldn’t stop himself from laughing, and James did too, but then he pulled himself together.

  “OK. Watch and learn my friend. Watch and learn.” He slammed the cue into the white ball, and sent it careering into the black. It took all the energy, and bounced off the end cushion at a hundred miles an hour. Randomly it careered around the table, at one point it came close enough to the middle pocket that it could have gone in, but it didn’t. Eventually is slowed and stopped.

  “Ah shit!” James exclaimed loudly. “I really thought I had that.” He held out the cue for Paul again, who looked delighted.

  “So I… So do I win?” He asked, grinning. He had slightly goofy teeth and his freckles colored with the thrill of it.

  “I guess you do.” James turned to the other table, where the cash was pinned under the beer bottle. But then his face dropped, because the bottle was there, but the cash wasn’t.

  “Hey?” James exclaimed, louder still. He looked to Ginger Paul, and then the other kid. “Hey did you? What the hell? Where’s that money?” James turned back to Ginger Paul, moving intimidatingly close.

  “Did you move it?”

  “No!”

  James turned to the other kid. “Did you?”

  The other kid looked scared again, but didn’t get it either. Neither of them had noticed Oscar at all, much less seen him slip the money from under the bottle before leaving the bar.

  “Oh man, that sucks,” James said, shaking his head. “That really fucking sucks. You got ripped off.” Ignoring the two kid’s anxious looks, he went to walk away.

  He met up with Oscar a couple of streets away, by the white SUV.

  “Fucking gorks.” James said, unlocking the car.

  “That was a stupid risk.” Oscar replied as he climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Oh come on. They were asking for it. They’d been on that table the whole fucking night.”

  “I’m serious. I’m not doing that again. Not for a hundred lousy bucks.”

  “It’s not just a hundred bucks.” James grinned as he pulled the ginger haired kid’s wallet from his pants pocket. “I went back. Made out I thought he’d taken the cash before I took the shot. Said it put me off. Little fucker shit his pants, thought I was gonna hit him. Slipped it out nice and easy.” James gave a narrow-eyed smile, and tossed the wallet across the car.

  “How much?” James asked, once Oscar had opened it and looked inside.

  “Two hundred seventy.”

  “And credit cards?”

  “Sure, but we can’t use them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to go to jail, that’s why.”

  “Alright, alright. You sure there’s nothing more?”

  Oscar sighed “Yeah I’m sure. You wanna check for me?”

  “No.” James sounded chastised.

  “Turn right here.” Oscar told him, then he used his sleeve to wipe the wallet, removing any fingerprints. By the time he was done, James had already lowered the window and steered the car close to the side of the bridge. Oscar glanced backwards and forwards, then tossed it casually out into the water below. In the semi-darkness there was no one around to notice.

  James rolled the window shut again.

  “Shit. Less than four hundred bucks huh?” James mused.

  “Uh huh.” Oscar replied.

  “You wanna go back and ask if they’ve got any more?” James turned suddenly to Oscar and grinned, but Oscar didn’t smile back.

  “Are you bored?”

  “What?”

  “Are you bored? Frustrated? How’s it going with that – what’s her name?”

  “Which one?”

  “I dunno. The cheerleader one. Isn’t that the latest?”

  “Brooke? Yeah, she’s fine. She’s all over me.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But maybe…” Oscar stopped, and James’ fa
ce tightened this time.

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe it’s time.”

  “Time?” James pretended not to understand. Oscar took a deep breath.

  “Time you got things back together with Lily.”

  James didn’t answer for a long while.

  “I’m kinda sick of hanging out in dead end bars too.”

  “You think I’m not?” James snapped the words back, and there was silence for a while.

  “Then I don’t see the problem. The two of you have split up before. You fuck around like a stud dog for a few weeks, wear yourself out and get back together… And I can see you want to – all these stupid risks you’re taking, ripping off dumb assholes for three hundred bucks. You’re deflecting. You’re putting it off. What I don’t understand is why. Just get back with her, and things can be back to normal.”

  James didn’t answer, but his face darkened.

  “What? Come on man, tell me. I’m your oldest friend. You’re not worried she found out about Brooke?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what?”

  James drove on for a while, looking fixed ahead, but then he started speaking again, through gritted teeth.

  “There’s been a development.”

  “What development?”

  “OK you’re right. I guess I was ready to get back with her. So I went to her house – I’ve still got a key. Only…”

  “Only what?”

  “Only she wasn’t alone, was she?”

  Oscar looked confused. Then he smiled as understanding dawned. “Oh man, you’re shitting me? You walked in on Lily…” he almost didn’t want to say it, but he did – “fucking someone?”

  He turned to James, and from the blackness on his friend’s face he stopped smiling.

  “Shit. What did you do?”

  “I left. They didn’t see me.”

  Oscar considered this.

  “You see who it was?”

  “Yeah. Yeah I saw.”

  James drove on one-handed for a while, picking at his teeth.

  “Well? Who was it?”

  James waited until he’d removed whatever it was that was annoying him.

  “It was Billy.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I wouldn’t say I’m bored. I mean, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, it’s just… it’s just it would be nice to do something other than hang around in Lily’s house and, and – well, go to bed. She’s texted me again, asking if I can go round tonight, when my classes are finished, so that’s what I’m going to do, but this time I’m going to suggest we go out somewhere. Just for a change.

  When I get there she’s dressed in her staying-in clothes. I’ve learned the difference now. If she’s going out she’ll make an effort, with make-up and whatnot, with her hair extra shiny and with clips in. But if she’s staying in she wears more comfortable clothes, and she just ties her hair up. Like today, she’s got leggings on, and a long sweater that comes down to her thighs. It’s not that I mind, I mean she genuinely looks amazing whatever she’s wearing, it’s just interesting to note.

  “Hey Billy,” She says as she opens the door, and I notice how she checks the street behind me before she closes it, but I don’t say anything. When the door is shut and I’ve put my bike against the wall she leans on me and starts to kiss me right away, which is nice but like I said earlier, it’s not really what I want to do tonight.

  “What’s wrong? Are you hungry?” she gives me a grin, like she noticed that I eat a lot.

  “No. I mean yes.” There’s a smell coming from the kitchen, I don’t know what it is, but it smells really good.

  “I am hungry,” I begin, and I tell myself to do it. Because if I don’t we’re going to end up eating and then just going to bed. “But I also thought…”

  “Thought what?” Lily pulls away from me and looks me full in the face. She looks confused.

  “I just thought that maybe we should…” Her eyes, which are so big and blue, follow my every word.

  “Should maybe go out somewhere? Afterwards, I mean.”

  Her look turns from confusion to something else. A little bit of hurt maybe.

  “Out?”

  I have to break away from those eyes, so I walk into the kitchen, towards the source of the smell, and there’s a bottle of wine open. I pour myself a glass of wine, and have quite a big swig from it.

  “Are you getting bored of me already?” Lily asks, watching me from the doorway.

  “No.” I feel a kick of emotion that I didn’t expect, and it feels like this isn’t going at all how I meant it to. “No, it’s just… just I’m a bit fed up with always being here, you know, being hidden away and everything.”

  And all of a sudden it’s almost like we’re having our first row.

  “Oh.” She says, and suddenly she won’t meet my eye at all. “Oh, so this house isn’t good enough for you? Is that it? I’ve been baking all afternoon, but now you don’t want it.” She comes in and picks up her glass now.

  “No, it’s not that. It smells great. I just, I had this idea.”

  “What idea?”

  “After dinner, can you pack a swimsuit?”

  “What? It’s freezing outside!”

  “I know.”

  I refuse to tell her anything while we’re eating – she’s made a sort of pie with chicken and vegetables and it’s really good – the pastry is just the right sort of crunchy on the edges and not soggy underneath. And then she goes upstairs to find a swimsuit and I come with her, and a bit of me wants to change my mind when I see the bed, and see her holding lots of different bikinis and things against her, asking me which type is most suitable for whatever we’re doing. I have to tell her I don’t know for sure we’ll be able to use it, and that confuses her even more. Then we book an Uber, even though she does have a car, a little Audi, but we’ve drunk quite a lot of the wine now. I get it on my account, so I don’t have to tell her where we’re going.

  It drops us off down by the waterfront, and I lead her towards the aquarium.

  I don’t completely approve of aquariums. I think it’s best if animals get to live their lives naturally, but on the other hand, they do give people a chance to see marine animals in realistic looking situations, and there’s some evidence that this leads to them better respecting the natural world. I read an article about it in National Geographic once. And a lot of aquariums, like this one, also do a lot for research and conservation. That’s how I got to first meet Kevin. He was only the day manager when I first met him, and I was quite young, and to be perfectly honest I think I annoyed him a bit because I kept coming up with suggestions for other animals they could display, and for how they could do it, and also offered to bring them animals that I collected. But as I got a bit older, and a bit more sensible, he became the deputy manager, and now he runs the whole aquarium. And now we’re quite good friends.

  “Why are we going to the aquarium Billy? Isn’t it closed?”

  “It is for most people,” I reply, leading the way. “But not for everyone.”

  It’s not Kevin who meets me at the door, they have a security guard, but Kevin’s told him what I want to do, and he lets us in, and locks the door shut behind us. Then he looks Lily up and down and raises his eyebrows in surprise, and winks at me and tells us to have fun and not trip any alarms. Then he waddles off back to his room.

  “Where’s he going?”

  “He has a little room. It has all the CCTV, so he’ll be keeping an eye on us.”

  “But what are we doing here Billy?”

  “I wanted to show you around.” I smile at her.

  Most of the lights in the tanks are on timers, because fish are used to the rhythms of day and night just like we are, but there’s some light in the hallways – kind of the same as if there was a full moon. But it always looks different at night anyway, because there’s no people here. I take the lead, showing her the first few zones – that’s how they have the animals
arranged, in zones. It’s all a bit basic, but it’s kinda fun too.

  In the Amazon zone they have about fifty red-bellied piranhas that actually do look quite menacing. The display says they can form feeding frenzies and strip an animal of all its flesh in minutes, but that’s mostly a myth, it only really happens during times of starvation. Mostly they just eat insects or seeds that fall in the water. There’s also a really fat iguana called Susan. The Africa zone has tilapia, giant perch, a couple of pig-nosed turtles, and lots of otters. They don’t like people much, so they’re much happier at night when no one’s around, and we get to see them playing, which is cute because there’s some pups too. There’s a zone called The Abyss, which is supposed to be about animals from the deep oceans, but of course they can’t reproduce the pressure of the real deep oceans, so it only has pictures of creatures like the Dumbo octopus, and then some fish from shallower seas that just happen to look scary or odd, like conger eels and nautilus. But Lily doesn’t seem to mind. I’m able to explain to Lily what all the animals are, and what makes them interesting, and she goes from one display to next completely transfixed. So that when we finally get to the big tank in the middle of the tropical zone, she’s forgotten what I asked her to bring.

  It really is big by the way, the size of a large swimming pool, but deeper and there’s a glass tunnel that leads underneath it – it’s kind of the grand finale of the warm seas part of the aquarium. You see the pool from above first, so you can’t quite make out what’s in the water until you’re standing right above it.

  “Are those sharks?”

  “Yup. Black tip reef sharks, nurse sharks and epaulette sharks. And rays, and zebra fish, and guitar fish, and a few tuna, and a turtle, he’s called Norman.”