Compulsion

by Martina Boone

  “That truck? How can you even tell? It looks like every other white pickup we’ve passed.”

  “Wyatt’s has a gun rack.” Eight tapped the brake and slowed their approach to the entrance of the parking lot.

  “Is that supposed to make me nervous?”

  “It’s supposed to be a fact.”

  There didn’t seem to be any way to avoid a meeting, even if they didn’t turn into the parking lot. The road ran straight on, with a sidewalk and a row of shops on the other side. No driveways. No side streets. Wyatt, if it was Wyatt, was going to get to the exit before they did, but not soon enough to pull out before he saw them.

  The white pickup was still twenty yards from the road. Eight had the Mercedes slowed to ten miles per hour, practically crawling to give Wyatt time to exit. But a line of cars was stacking up behind them. One of the drivers honked. Two sharp blasts. Eight hesitated, glanced in the rearview mirror, then punched the accelerator.

  The Mercedes surged forward. Still accelerating, they passed the entrance to the parking lot fast enough that Barrie got little more than an impression of a dark-haired man at the wheel of the truck and the shape of a rifle on a rack in the rear window. The truck pulled out onto the road after they had passed.

  “Damn,” Eight said again.

  The truck followed thirty yards behind. Eight accelerated, but the truck kept pace, and soon they were well out of town, past the point with the lighthouse, past the public beaches. No shops, no side roads, just a long, narrow stretch of asphalt.

  Barrie told herself it didn’t matter. It was broad daylight, for Pete’s sake. “Where does this road go anyway?”

  “Past one of the old Watson rice fields and out to the edge of the woods.”

  “And after that?”

  Eight tapped the top of the steering wheel with the flat of his hand, then switched to two fingers, as if he were playing rock-paper-scissors with the truth. “Marsh and trees and alligators. It runs into the creek that runs along Watson’s Landing, and there’s no bridge on this side.” He rubbed the back of his neck and released a sigh. “This may have been a miscalculation. I figured Wyatt would go the other way.”

  “I’m not worried.” Barrie burrowed her hands beneath her legs.

  People didn’t act like this. Stalk one another out of parking lots onto beautiful, lonely roads.

  On Barrie’s right, marsh grasses swayed in gleaming water. On the left, the ocean vanished behind a legion of sand dunes overgrown with sea oats, and a scant widening of the road allowed parking for access to the beach. In front of them, a heat haze slicked the asphalt. A yellow sign and a chain marked the end of the road, which dwindled into grass and brush descending the bank toward the creek.

  Dead end. Not a soul around.

  Eight cut a sharp U-turn, downshifted, and slammed on the brake. The car groaned to a halt along the sand, facing the white pickup that was suddenly a whole lot closer.

  “What are you doing?” Barrie’s heart rate kicked into a sprint.

  “Give me a minute.” With one hand on the gearshift, Eight stared through the windshield.

  The pickup slowed, then stopped, just far enough away that the driver was hard to see through the glare on the glass. Still too close.

  “Give me your phone,” Barrie said.

  “Hang on. Give him time to think. He’ll figure out that I can get past him before he’s breaking twenty miles per hour. He probably hasn’t even figured out why he came after us. That’s a Colesworth thing. They all act first and then engage the brain as an afterthought.”

  “You’re crazy, you know that? What if he just runs us off the road?”

  Even as she spoke, the truck lurched forward. Barrie snatched Eight’s phone from the ashtray to call 911.

  Eight held up his hand. “Wait. Look. He’s leaving. I told you.”

  Eight’s voice held as much surprise as relief, which didn’t inspire Barrie’s confidence. But he was right. With a belch of exhaust, the pickup shuddered into a three-point turn and screeched back the way it had come.

  Barrie’s spine surrendered. She slumped against the seat, clutching Eight’s phone, and breathing, just breathing, until he reached over and took it from her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Her hands were trembling. She couldn’t look at Eight, and she was done with Colesworths. She shook her head. “Sure. But let’s go back to Watson’s Landing.”

  “What about Cassie?”

  “I can meet her later.” When hell froze over.

  Eight pushed his hair back and studied her with that odd, fixed stillness of his. “I don’t know. You might have been right in the first place. Better to get the introduction over with. Defuse Cassie—and all of them—by letting her know you went out of your way to meet her.”

  He made Cassie sound like a ticking bomb that needed to be disarmed.

  Barrie shook her head again. Eight watched her another moment, then threw open the driver’s door and stepped out.

  “Come on. As long as we’re here, I’ve got something I want to show you. You can tell Pru it was part of the tour.” He set off toward the dunes without even waiting to see if she was coming.

  Barrie’s heels sank into the sand. She slipped off her shoes, tossed them into the back of the car, and ran after him. The smell of salt and the rush and roar of the ocean broke over her in waves of homesickness. When she reached the beach, though, it didn’t look familiar.

  Why did that surprise her? This wasn’t the beach below the cliff at Lula’s house. Barrie had no right to hope for a sunset-gold bridge that stretched from a shining city to low, green mountains across the bay. Yet its absence slapped her, woke her up like the cooling wind that came lashing off the water. It was strange to see a beach with no joggers, to find no one power walking or hunting for shells along the shoreline, to feel no sense that there were crowds and cars just out of sight. There were only gulls, and yards and yards of desolate sand leading to miles and miles of empty ocean.

  She ran to catch up with Eight. “What are we doing here?”

  He smiled infuriatingly and walked on, but it wasn’t long before he pointed at a set of fan-shaped tracks, and turned to follow them as they led out to the water. Above the high-tide line, the tracks ended in a disturbed patch of sand.

  “So that’s your buried treasure?” she asked. “What is it?”

  “Loggerhead nest. They’re pretty common all down the coast in the summer.”

  “I thought they were endangered.”

  “Because only one in a thousand hatchlings lives long enough to lay eggs of its own.” Eight’s face suddenly looked pinched and serious. “They’re tiny when they dig themselves up out of the sand—only two inches long—and then they have to cross the beach and make it to the ocean. Some days it looks like the whole beach is a feeding frenzy of crabs and seagulls, and hatchlings trying to reach the water. You have to see it to believe how impossible that trip must be.” He shaded his eyes and turned to watch the waves coming in.

  Barrie followed suit, her eyes narrowed while the wind whipped her hair. “Now what are we looking for?”

  “Black pops breaking the surface. Those are loggerheads.”

  He lowered his cheek beside hers, so close the stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave pricked Barrie’s skin. So close she felt found again. She breathed in his calm. How could someone with so much energy be so calm, especially after the Wyatt run-in? How did he change moods so fast?

  “There.” He held up his finger so she could sight along it. “That’s one. See it? And another there.”

  She squinted and finally spotted a shape where it broke the surface. “Oh, look! I see it.”

  Her voice came out in a squeal. She rolled her eyes at herself, but Eight laughed, a low rumble barely discernible from the ocean’s voice. He dropped down to the sand and sat watching her with his hands hung across his knees.

  “What are you doing now?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Y
ou’re interesting to watch.”

  Her face went warm, but she was smiling. A few minutes ago she wouldn’t have believed she could feel like smiling. The thought sobered her again. She didn’t want this feeling to end, not yet. Maybe it was the fear that had made the pleasure even sweeter, but for this moment, in this place, Watson Island wasn’t bad. She wished she could stay right there on the beach with Eight, instead of having to go up and face the road down which Wyatt had followed them. She wished she had never heard of Wyatt. Or Cassie. What if her cousin was like Emma Jean?

  And how many Colesworth cousins were there?

  Barrie stared out at the ocean, and it seemed to her the whole island was like the water out there, everything hidden beneath a layer of calm until some dark and unknown shape, some unknown relative or another of Lula’s secrets suddenly broke the surface.

  She hated to admit it, but Eight probably was right. The longer she waited before making friends with her cousin, the harder it was going to be to psych herself up for it. Obviously, he had brought her down here to make a point. Most of his hatchling turtles never made it to the water, but it wasn’t because they didn’t try.

  Partly for Eight, but mostly for herself, Barrie didn’t want to be the kind of person who never tried.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s go meet my cousin.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The parking lot at Bobby Joe’s Beach Dogs was emptier than it had been earlier, but beachgoers in bathing suits and cover-ups still lingered at most of the outside tables. Reggae music trickled from speakers beneath the eaves. Barrie ducked under Eight’s arm while he held the front door, and walked into a welcome blast of cooler air scented with grease and spicy mustard. Even more people occupied the inside tables covered in checkered cloths. But a girl chatting with the cook at the order pickup counter was the one who caught Barrie’s attention—caught everyone’s attention.

  The girl’s dark mass of curls was swept into a ponytail, her face tipped up as she laughed. Her back was arched and bare in a bikini top. That was the uniform, apparently; the other two servers wore the same kind of bathing suit top and cutoff shorts. Still, this was the girl you noticed.

  Eight released the door. It fell closed behind him with a bang. The cook said something Barrie couldn’t hear, and the girl’s ponytail fanned out behind her as she spun to look at Eight. Every face in the room turned to look. The girl’s attention moved to Barrie. Her eyes widened. Then she rushed across the floor littered with sand and peanut shells and caught Barrie’s hands in both of hers.

  “You just have to be my little cousin. Barrie, isn’t it? I heard you were coming—in this town everyone knows everything!” She gave a laugh and pulled Barrie into a hug. “I am so, so glad to meet you.”

  This was the girl Pru and Seven didn’t want Barrie to meet?

  Barrie wanted to be the kind of a person who could throw her arms around a stranger and not feel self-conscious. But she returned the hug awkwardly, too aware of everyone staring at her. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to relax.

  “Now tell me, did you come to eat or to say hello?”

  “Both,” Eight said at the same time Barrie answered, “I wanted to meet you.”

  “And I am so glad you did! Here.” Cassie dragged Barrie toward a table by the window. It hadn’t been cleared yet, but she swept up the cups, red baskets, and debris with a quick “Hold on a second,” then rushed to drop them onto the counter by the order window. She returned with a fresh bucket of peanuts and a damp cloth, which she used to wipe the table. When she’d finished, she straightened with her cheeks slightly flushed.

  “There now. Have a seat.”

  “Thank you,” Barrie said, although she couldn’t, because Cassie was in the way.

  “You know,” Cassie said, examining Barrie’s face, “you don’t look anything like the pictures I’ve seen of my uncle Wade.” She turned Barrie to face Eight and dropped her arm around Barrie’s shoulders. “What do you think? Do we look alike? Can you tell we’re cousins?”

  Barrie’s face heated until, she imagined, she was the color of the crab shells hanging on the wood-planked walls. Even in her high-heeled shoes, she was almost a head shorter than Cassie. On top of that, her cousin had the kind of effortless confidence that came from being in-your-face gorgeous from the moment you entered the world. In their level of perfection, Cassie and Eight were a matched set. Barrie was nowhere near their league. She knew that. Seemingly everyone else did too. They were all still staring.

  “You know what? It doesn’t matter.” As if she’d caught Barrie’s embarrassment, Cassie gave a blinding smile and squeezed Barrie’s hand again. “Look at this beautiful pale skin of yours! And bless your heart, look how skinny you are! I wish I had your figure. Now you sit right here. Sit. You order, and by the time your food is ready, I’ll be able to sneak back and talk a bit.” She pointed to a chalkboard menu hanging above the order window. “What can I get you? On the house, of course.”

  Barrie sat and tried to concentrate on the options, but there were too many combinations and hot dog condiments she had never heard of: the Blue Dog with blue-cheese slaw and sweet potato mustard; the Hottie Dog with chili, cheese, slaw, and spicy mustard; the Green Dog, which was tofu with mustard, ketchup, and onions . . .

  “If anything seems too adventurous, you can always order the Bikini Dog.” Cassie pointed to an item on the bottom of the listing. “That’s just plain.”

  Eight slid along the bench, closer to Barrie. Her mouth was watering at the idea of sweet potato mustard; it sounded tangy and spicy and sweet all at the same time. “She’ll have the Blue,” Eight said. “Do you want sweet potato fries with that, Bear? And a Cherry Coke?”

  “Sounds great.” Perfect, actually, which bothered Barrie almost as much as the fact that Eight assumed he could order for her or casually give her a nickname as if he knew her. On the other hand, bears were strong, and she needed all the strength she could get.

  She gave an annoyed nod, and tried not to notice the way Cassie stared into Eight’s eyes while he ordered a Hottie Dog for himself.

  “All right. I’ll put this in and help a few more customers, and then I’ll be back.” Cassie scribbled the last item onto her pad. “I can’t wait to hear all about you and your mama and San Francisco—and well, just everything!” She gave Barrie a dazzling smile before departing.

  The moment she was gone, a silence blanketed the room. A motionless silence. Then a bench scraped loudly a few tables away. A couple of teens hurried over, a boy and a girl with long legs and golden skin. The boy slapped Eight on the back and they introduced themselves, but Barrie didn’t catch their names. Suddenly it seemed like all the benches were scraping back and the peanut shells on the floor were being trampled by every foot in the building en route to their table. Eight acted like it was no big deal, easy peasy, all these people, all those words, all the smiles and laughs and weighing, scrutinizing eyes. He sat on the bench like it was a throne and he was holding court, and the crowd made a half circle around their table, talking, elbowing one another out of the way to wave or hold out their hands in introduction.

  Barrie smiled until her cheeks hurt. “Nice to meet you,” she said at least twenty times, nodding and feeling like her head was as empty as a bobblehead doll’s. Why was it so hard to think of anything intelligent or witty to say in answer to the questions thrown at her?

  “How do you like Watson’s Point?” someone asked.

  “It’s charming,” Barrie answered.

  “So you’d never met your aunt Pru before now?” an older man said. “That’s what I heard, isn’t it?”

  “Nope, never met her,” Barrie said. “But she’s very nice.”

  “Sorry to hear about your mama passing,” the golden girl said.

  “Thank you.” Barrie smiled even wider.

  “Yeah, we sure were sorry to hear about your mama,” someone else said. “A little confused about it, but awful sorry.”

&nbs
p; Barrie nodded again, feeling trapped and stupid. And so it went for a few more minutes, and though they were all very nice, she wished they would just go away.

  “How long are you going to stay?” someone asked. “You moving back for good?”

  Eight cleared his throat. “Y’all do know the girl just got here? We might want to give her some room to breathe or she’s going to run out of here faster than a scalded haint. No need for her to meet the whole town in one swoop.”

  He didn’t raise his voice. If anything, he spoke more softly than the others, but they heard him, laughed, and started to disperse. Barrie answered the last calls of “Well, welcome,” and “Good-bye,” and sighed in relief. It didn’t escape her, though, that almost everyone seemed to pull out their cell phones before they had even gotten back to their tables.

  “Everyone’s going to race to make sure their friends know they met you first,” Cassie said, coming back with their food. “This place. I swear, you’d think no one had anything to do all day but gossip.”

  The front door banged and a middle-aged couple entered. As he passed their table, a man with a thinning thatch of hair stopped and gaped at them.

  “Rolls the years back to see the two of you here like this,” he said.

  Barrie looked at him blankly. He seemed to give himself a mental shake and held his hand out. “Sorry. You must be Lula’s daughter. Welcome back home, honey.”

  “Barrie Watson,” Barrie said. “Thanks, and nice to meet you.”

  “Joe Goldstein.” His smile was sheepish and sweet. “I edit the local paper. Heard you were back, of course, but I won’t deny it caught me by surprise. I could almost think it was Seven and Pru back here, keeping one eye on each other and the other looking out for old man Emmett.”

  Cassie, rolling her eyes, excused herself and stepped back from the table. “Gotta get those orders,” she said. “I’ll be back.”