Once the big guy disappeared into his own seat, however, Dexter’s smile faded immediately. He shot a sidelong glance at the empty seat beside him. The door up front was closing again, and this time he suspected it was for good.
She could be back there somewhere already, though, he thought. She was definitely mad enough at me to switch her seat and sit in coach.
He waited impatiently while the plane taxied slowly to the runway. It seemed to take forever before their turn came and the flight was cleared for takeoff. Dexter closed his eyes as the plane roared up into the sunny Australian sky, not even bothering to say his usual little prayer for a safe flight. His mind was completely fixated on what he was going to say to Daisy.
By the time the captain turned off the seatbelt sign, the flight attendants were already getting started on the first beverage service. When Dexter looked back, he saw their little metal carts blocking both aisles behind him.
Maybe I’d better wait until they’re done, Dexter told himself. No big deal.
It was a long flight. He would have plenty of time to work things out with Daisy before they reached their stopover in Los Angeles. In fact, maybe it was better to give her a little time to cool off before he tried talking to her.
He felt a flutter of relief at the thought of putting off their confrontation. Did that mean he was only making excuses? He closed his eyes, trying not to feel like the world’s biggest coward.
Wouldn’t it be easier just to forget about the whole thing? a little voice whispered inside his head. There are plenty of other girls back at school. You could try for one of them. Or you could add another class next semester to keep yourself busy and forget about girls for a while. Maybe you just weren’t born to be happy.…
“Something to drink, sir?”
Dexter’s eyes flew open, and he saw an attractive female flight attendant smiling down at him. “Oh,” he blurted. “Uh, nothing for me, thanks.”
She moved on, allowing Dexter to slide back into his gloomy thoughts. His mind spun ahead into the future, and he saw himself wearing a white lab coat, listening to an endless series of faceless, discontented people complain about their problems, and then going home to a barren, lonely apartment.…
No, he thought rebelliously, shaking his head to clear away the grim vision. It doesn’t have to be that way. I can still fix things, make everything all right—all I have to do is find Daisy.
Just as he was reaching for the buckle of his seatbelt, someone hurried up the aisle and flopped into the aisle seat beside him. Startled, Dexter glanced over.
“Yo,” Jason said, unsmiling. “What’s up, dude?”
“Not much,” Dexter replied cautiously. “Um, where’ve you been? When you guys didn’t make it here to your seats…”
“Enough with the small talk, man.” Jason’s face looked puffy and pale; it was obvious he was still hungover from the previous night’s excesses. He tugged at the hem of his oversized basketball jersey. “I just came up here to let you know that Daisy wants you to stay away from now on.”
“Where is she?” Dexter demanded.
Jason shrugged. “To be honest with you, man, I don’t even know. I’m not sure if she made this flight in the end or not. She changed our seat assignment to get away from you, and we ended up in two single seats in totally different parts of the plane. Then right before pre-boarding, she told me to go ahead without her.” He shrugged. “Guess she was having second thoughts about sitting in coach. Can’t say I blame her—it sucks back there. Thanks a lot, dude.”
Dexter opened his mouth, ready to offer to switch seats. He might not be Jason’s biggest fan, but he figured it was the least he could do under the circumstances.
But before he could get the words out, Jason was gone. Dexter slumped into his seat, his recent determination completely sapped by what he’d just heard.
Whaddaya expect, boy? his aunt’s voice scolded in his head. Folks like us ain’t made for good things. You oughta know that by now, or you’re stupider’n you look.
He realized he was clutching the armrests so tightly his knuckles were white. How could she be that way? Worse yet, how could he just sit there all those years and let her turn him into the same kind of person? Oh, he might not be quite as outwardly unpleasant. But he was just as much a victim of her negative thinking as she was. For a while it had seemed he was breaking free by creating his new life as SuperDexter. But wasn’t that just another way of being ashamed of who he really was? Why hadn’t he trusted Daisy—and the rest of his friends at school—to like him for himself?
Dexter wasn’t sure how long he sat there while the self-accusatory thoughts spun through his head like a dizzying roulette wheel of guilt. Nauseating waves of cowardice, passivity, and despair racked his whole body, making his throat and stomach spasm.
Finally, he realized there was just one way to make the pain stop. It was time to take action. Past time, really. He couldn’t go on this way; now that his two worlds had collided, he saw that it never could have continued much longer. Even if he could figure out a way to fix his relationship with Daisy, the whole two-lives thing just wasn’t working for him anymore.
The passive part of his mind seemed to slip away, as if blown back out across the ocean in the exhaust of the jet engines, leaving him with a new sense of resolve. Whatever happened with Daisy, he couldn’t go back.
As soon as I get home, I’m going to do something about the whole situation, he vowed, this time knowing that he wasn’t going to wimp out or change his mind. I’ll start by having a serious talk with Mom and Aunt Paula. If they won’t let me pick my own major—control my own life and future—then I’m through with them. I’ll give back the money and make it on my own.
He felt nervous but also invigorated by the thought. At that moment, he realized that he’d finally shaken off an entire lifetime of fear and submissiveness.
It was a good feeling, and it gave him the courage to make another vow: I’m going to make Daisy talk to me, too, no matter what Jason says, he thought. She owes me that much. I deserve that much.
Despite his new sense of purpose, he felt another shudder in his stomach at that thought. But he took a deep breath and glanced behind him. Enough stalling. He was going to search the plane row by row until he determined whether she was on it. If she was, he was going to talk to her and not stop until she listened to what he had to say. And if she wasn’t, he would track her down and do the same once they were both back at school.
It’s no wonder she’s upset now, he thought. But she’s not an unreasonable person. If I come clean, explain why I did it, tell her about my life before I met her…Well, maybe there’s still a chance for us.
The idea of telling her everything—no secrets this time, no holds barred—scared him a little. But it also made him feel oddly brave.
He smiled. Then he unfastened his safety belt and stood up, crouching to avoid hitting his head as he slid toward the aisle.
Suddenly the plane lurched violently. The entire cabin pitched and shuddered, the metal framework groaning softly in protest.
“Ow!” Dexter muttered as his head cracked painfully against the overhead compartment. He saw stars, and grabbed the seat back to keep himself from stumbling into the aisle.
The FASTEN SEATBELTS signed blinked on with a ping, and the reassuring voice of a flight attendant came on over the PA: “Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has switched on the fasten seatbelts sign…”
Dexter sank back into his seat, rubbing the bump on his head. He couldn’t help being shaken by the sudden, violent disturbance in the otherwise smooth flight, but it hadn’t dampened his determination. He would find Daisy as soon as the turbulence was over.
23
“THANKS FOR LISTENING.” KATE shot Dexter a quick glance and a half-smile. “You’re easy to talk to.”
“No problem.” Dexter didn’t bother pointing out that he’d done more talking than she had. All he’d been able to get out of her was that somehow, there was
a gun on the island. And somehow, someone had used it to put the dying man out of his misery, at his own request.
After that, she’d deftly changed the subject to why he was out in the jungle at that hour. Before he knew it, he’d found himself telling her almost his entire life story.
Now she sighed, staring up at the stars winking down at them from high above the treetops. “It’s strange,” she said softly. “It can be so hard to talk to people sometimes. Even when you know it’s the right thing to do.”
“Yeah,” Dexter agreed. He shot her a curious look, wondering if she was ready to open up to him a little more. “Who are you thinking about?”
She hesitated for so long that he thought she wasn’t going to answer at all. “Jack, mostly,” she said at last. “I know I need to talk to him about—about something. Something…difficult. It’s just so hard to find the right moment.”
“Then maybe you need to make the moment,” Dexter suggested. “If it’s important to you to talk to Jack, just go ahead and do it. It probably won’t even be as bad as you—”
“What makes you think he’d even try to understand?” she shot back before he could finish, sounding almost accusatory.
Dexter still had no idea what she was talking about, but he shrugged. “He might not,” he told her, his mind slipping back to his own problems back home. “But all you can do is try. I just wish I’d tried a little harder to make myself talk to Daisy.”
Kate’s shoulders went limp, and she nodded. “You could be right,” she agreed. “Maybe I’ll try to talk to him tomorrow.” She glanced over at him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring you down with all this.”
“You didn’t,” he mumbled with a twinge of self-pity. “I brought my problems all on myself. Now that everyone knows I’ve been lying about who I am, they’re never going to trust me again. Not that I blame them.”
Kate shook her head. “I doubt that. Everyone has secrets, you know.” Once again, she stared up at the distant stars. “In a way, being here is a way for all of us to start over. Clean slate.”
Dexter glanced at her doubtfully. He suspected she was just being nice. What could someone like her possibly know about his kind of secret life? Still, he appreciated her effort to cheer him up. If she could hear what he’d told her and not seem bothered by it, maybe things weren’t so hopeless for him on the island after all.
A few minutes later they headed back to the beach. When they stepped out of the trees, Boone spotted them and hurried over immediately.
“Dexter, dude,” he said with obvious relief as Kate faded off in the direction of the fires. “Don’t scare us like that! The way you ran off like that, in the dark and all…You had us worried about you, man.”
“You were worried?” Dexter felt a flush of emotion. “But after the way I lied to everyone…”
Boone shrugged and waved him off. “Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “You weren’t yourself—none of us were after the crash, I guess. Plus you had the whole dehydration thing going on.”
Arzt hurried up just in time to hear Boone’s last comment. “He’s right, you know,” he said. “I keep telling you, you gotta drink a lot and take care of yourself. What do you expect to happen otherwise?” He sounded annoyed, but his eyes showed concern as well.
“Thanks, guys. Sorry to worry you.”
He glanced over and saw Shannon staring in his direction. When he shot her a tentative smile, she gave only a fake-looking half-smile in return before quickly turning away.
Dexter sighed. Okay, so maybe not everyone was going to look at him the same way now that they knew the truth. But he couldn’t control that; all he could do was accept it.
“So you guys really aren’t going to hold the crazy Dexter Cross stuff against me?” he asked, going for a joking tone and failing miserably.
Boone shrugged. “You can’t help what you say when you’re not in your right mind.”
“Right.” Arzt nodded and pursed his lips primly in his best “teacher knows best” expression. “The important thing is that you’re telling us the truth now that you’ve remembered it.”
“Thanks, guys,” Dexter said gratefully. “And don’t worry. It’s the whole truth and nothing but from here on out.”
A ripple of movement caught his eye over at the edge of the jungle. Dexter glanced that way. Was that a dark, solitary figure skulking there in the trees, just out of the firelight’s reach?
His doppelganger turned away, not interested any longer. Whatever was out there, it didn’t have anything to do with him.
A little later, he sat beside one of the signal fires with Boone talking things out. “So it’s no wonder I couldn’t remember that fancy restaurant you and Shannon kept talking about,” Dexter commented with a rueful chuckle. “I’d never been to LA in my life until the stopover on my way to Australia.”
“So now that you’ve remembered the rest of your real life, do you remember if your girlfriend was on the plane?” Boone asked.
Dexter shook his head. “I’m still not sure,” he said. “All I know is I haven’t seen any sign of her on the island so far.”
Boone nodded. “That’s tough, man.”
“Yeah.” Dexter sighed and stared into the fire. “So I’ll have to wait until we’re rescued and see how that turns out.”
He was starting to realize that there were always going to be things he didn’t know or couldn’t understand. Maybe that was how life was meant to be.
And maybe all we can do about it is keep searching for the truth, he thought, rubbing his scar thoughtfully. Whatever it takes.
For Claire
without whom I’d be truly lost
1
JEFF HADLEY STARED INTO the creature’s eyes.
The figure was dark, its features indistinct but disturbing. Malevolent eyes, black pools of hate, glared from its shadowy face. It wasn’t moving, but its attitude was threatening, like a snake coiled and ready to attack.
Just behind the monstrous thing, other, similar creatures lurked, half-visible and ominous, quite still but poised to continue their horrible advance. And behind them weird, indecipherable symbols floated mysteriously. The signs looked like some strange language, impossible to translate. Jeff thought that if he could only decipher them, they might prove to be clues to an otherwise unsolvable mystery.
Staring at the ghastly things before him, a wave of dread washed over Jeff, bathing him in sweat. Where had these monsters come from? The answer was even more unsettling than the question. He knew that they could only have emerged from one place—from within Jeff himself.
“Dude!”
Jeff whirled around at the sound of the voice, jolted out of what almost felt like a hypnotic trance. Hurley stood behind him, his large frame dominating the space. No one had ever intruded on the tranquil solitude of Jeff’s studio before. The dense copse of trees could only be entered by climbing through a narrow passageway between low-hanging, thickly leaved tree limbs. And of all the denizens of the island to have gained entrance, Jeff thought that Hurley was the least likely. He was built along the lines of a refrigerator, not exactly the body type one would expect to be able to easily slither through such a forbidding opening. Whenever Jeff stood near Hurley, he felt a little like Stan Laurel beside Oliver Hardy. In contrast to Hurley’s impressive mass, Jeff was positively lithe—tall and thin. Much thinner now, in fact, than normal. His shaggy hair was a coppery red-blond and his beard was so fine, and grew so reluctantly, that even after all this time as a castaway, Jeff’s face showed little more than a five o’clock shadow.
Jeff knew Hurley only superficially. Even this, he had to admit, was better than he knew most of his fellow castaways. But even though Jeff could hardly call Hurley a friend, he had always felt comfortable in the young man’s presence. There was something about Hurley’s wry and affable manner that put others at ease. Jeff, with his Scottish reserve, found the young man’s openness and guilelessness to be refreshing—it seemed very American to Jeff. So e
ven though Jeff didn’t like being interrupted at his work, he was pleased to see that it was Hurley as opposed to, say, Locke. Jeff didn’t like Locke. He didn’t trust him.
“Hello, Hurley,” Jeff said. “What can I do for you?”
Hurley didn’t answer immediately. He seemed to be transfixed by the drawing Jeff had been working on.
Then, snapping out of it, Hurley said, “We’re getting together a foraging party for tomorrow. Are you in?”
Damn, Jeff thought. A day away from the studio. A day of having to deal with the others. “Sure,” he said.
Hurley continued, “Locke says he knows where there’s a boar. If he can manage to snare it, it’ll take a few of us to haul it back.”
“Who else is going?”
Hurley counted on his fingers as he listed the names. “You, me, Locke, Michael—do you know Michael?”
Jeff said, “Kind of.” In fact, he didn’t know Michael at all. There probably weren’t more than half a dozen people on the island whose names had stuck with him.
Hurley continued, “…and maybe Sawyer. And that’s a big maybe. Sawyer doesn’t like to put himself out much.”
Jeff shrugged. “Who does?”
Hurley said, “Be nice to have some meat for a change. I get pretty tired of fruit and fish, fish and fruit every freakin’ day.”
Jeff smiled. “I must admit all that fruit did quite a number on my digestion for the first week or so we were here. But I’m getting used to it now. Feeling healthier than I’ve felt in a long time.”
“Yeah,” Hurley said. “The Island Diet. It’s working on everybody but me.”
“Oh, come on,” Jeff said, “you look like you’ve dropped at least a stone.”
“How much is that in American?”
Jeff did a little mental figuring and then said, “Mmm, it’s about fourteen pounds.”
Hurley looked dubious, but pleased. As far as he knew, he hadn’t lost an ounce since coming to the island, but a compliment is a compliment. “Well,” Hurley said, “I do seem to have more energy, I guess.”
Jeff said, “What time are we leaving tomorrow?”
Lost: The Novels Page 28
