Mom coming home should have changed everything between Henri and Jesse. Henri should have gotten tired of him quickly, like she’d done with every boy before. Mom should have ended Jesse being at our house during every daylight hour.
Every one of my predictions was wrong.
Mom could see the change in Henri the rest of the world could see too. Mom wasn’t like me; she didn’t know it was temporary. She welcomed Jesse over our threshold every chance she got.
But I’d seen Henri at school that day, and I knew it wasn’t just Jesse she was keeping at the end of her leash.
Midway through western civ I’d asked for a pass to the bathroom when I realized my homework was in another binder. As I turned the dial on my locker, I glanced up the staircase toward the music room, where I saw Henri and Mr. Flynn whispering by the water fountain.
He trailed his fingers down the arm of her blazer, and I bolted back to my class without even grabbing my homework.
Now I collected my textbook from my bedroom carpet. “Why so happy?”
“No reason.”
“I’ve gotta study,” I said. “Can you give me some privacy?”
As soon as Jesse would go home for the night, she’d come into my room and interrupt whatever I was doing. I despised being his substitute. Worst of all was this: Whenever she was given the choice between us, she chose him every time.
That terrified me. I could only be defined by Henri if she was defined by me too.
Henri had left my bedroom door cracked, and Mom knocked on the open door. She held the house phone in her hand, with her palm pressed over the mouthpiece. “Hey girls, your dad’s on the phone. He’d like to talk to you both. He wants to invite you out for dinner this weekend.”
Henri didn’t even turn around. “We’re busy.”
Mom’s arm tensed as she pressed her palm to the phone harder. “Right now? Or for dinner?”
Henri traced the floral pattern on my comforter with her fingernail. “Both.”
“Emma?” Past Henri’s shoulder, Mom focused on me. “Do you want to talk to him?”
I thought about who had made Henri the way she was now. All roads led back to him.
“I’m busy too.”
My mom pulled the door shut behind her and padded down the hall.
“Em, is something wrong? I know things have been hectic lately, and I’m sorry. I want to do something with you soon, only me and you and a bucket of the butteriest popcorn in the city. Can we schedule another movie day for this Sunday?”
A spark of the Henri I adored hadn’t shone through since she’d started dating Jesse. Now it crackled across the walls and warmed my whole room.
She sank her top teeth into her bottom lip. “Oh, wait. I’ve actually already got plans.”
“With who?”
“Jesse. His dad got us tickets to see the game. Can we postpone it one week? Only one week, pretty please?”
“Fine.”
“But there’s a party on Saturday night. It’s not like an Ari Deveroux–sized affair or anything like that. Just a beach thing Mick’s hosting. Jesse and I are going. You should come.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
Really, I had no intention of going, especially not to a small party where Jesse and Henri would be inescapable, where he’d kiss her on the forehead as he put drinks into her hands and wrap his jacket around her shoulders when the fog rolled in.
Henri thumbed through my English lit book. “Why are you studying?”
“Because that’s what juniors do.”
“Junior year is supposed to be one of the fun ones.”
“It’s actually supposed to be the worst.” I took my textbook from her and slid it into my backpack. “Sorry I didn’t spend my year taking floral design and nutrition.”
Her face turned serious and she sat up, cross-legged on my comforter. “You’d better be careful. You’re going to turn out as bitchy as me.”
“I doubt it.”
Henri huffed as she touched her feet down on the carpet. She took a few steps toward the door and turned back. “On second thought, don’t bother coming to the party. I mean, who would you even talk to?”
“Huh?”
“Emma, you don’t have any friends.”
I swiveled my chair and stared at her. “I have friends.”
“Who, Em?”
“Jesse. And Mick. And . . .” My voice shook. “And Ari.”
A tiny smile crept up. “Those are my friends. Not yours.” On her way out the door, Henri wrapped her fist around my soul, and my sister, she knew how to pound. “Night.”
She slammed my door behind her.
A sound slipped from my mouth. My nose stung, eyes hot. I pressed the back of my hand to my lips.
Henri was right. But the worst part was knowing that if my sister truly loved me, she never would have said it.
I sank my teeth into my fist and tried to feel something else, anything but what I was feeling: I hated my sister.
The door cracked open.
“Emma, this thing with your dad—” Mom’s glasses had worked their way down the bridge of her nose. She pushed them in place and focused on me. “Oh, honey, why are you crying? What happened?”
She shut the door behind her and crossed the room.
Henri had caught Jesse in her web and now she was ready to devour him. He didn’t even know. Poor, sappy Jesse would have gladly fed her his heart. And Mr. Flynn—the whole thing was wrong. He was an adult. A teacher. It was wrong on so many levels.
She didn’t deserve them both. She didn’t deserve either of them.
“Mom,” I said as she wiped my tears away with the sleeve of her sweater. “I have something to tell you.”
“Okay.” Mom crouched in front of me as I sat on my bed. She took my hands in hers. “I’m listening.”
Words didn’t come. I almost backed down, but not because I didn’t want to expose Henri—because I didn’t know how.
“Emma, sweetheart, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
I said the most honest thing I knew: “Someone’s hurting Henri.” I looked up at the ceiling to try to make my tears reabsorb. “A teacher at school. They’ve been seeing each other for months.”
Mom covered her mouth with her hands. She exhaled and said, “And they’re sleeping together?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
All my agony flooded out of my eyes in an ugly gush. Mom squeezed me into a hug. “I’ll fix this, Emma. Nobody’s going to hurt your sister.”
She had no idea the person hurting Henri most was me.
CHAPTER 25
We woke up the next dry day obsessed with the idea of sailing away, Alex and I. With our grasp on hope so tenuous, it was easy to let that raft become everything.
On the title page of his success manual, Alex used Henri’s pen to draw a plan. The sketch started off simple, but a few pen strokes brought it to life.
I scanned the clusters of bamboo we’d collected. “Those guys who escaped Alcatraz, what was their raft made out of?”
“Raincoats,” Alex said. “All we have is bamboo. But it’s useful.” He inspected the tarp and bamboo pieces we’d used to splint his fingers.
“Does it still hurt?”
He let it drop to his side. “Only if I think about it.”
Henri sat in the wet sand at the bottom of the beach, letting the surf crash up and down her long legs. She hadn’t offered to help, and she wouldn’t.
It had to be hard to live with what she’d done, forced to spend all day, every day staring at Alex’s mangled hand. Henri hadn’t apologized for it. But when he’d tried to crack a coconut and couldn’t hold it in place, she’d opened it herself.
That small act was the most sincere kin
d of apology my sister could give.
Alex lifted his shirt and wiped his sweaty forehead on the hem. “If you work on cordage, I’ll work on tying the bamboo together.”
“How will you tie them?”
He lifted his left hand. “This one still works. And I can use my teeth.” He let out a breath as he stared at the pieces.
“What?” I asked.
“Other than wind power, currents, we won’t have much control. We could . . . we could just drift. Like the first day. No land. Just blue.” Watching me nod, he squeezed his eyes shut. “If you didn’t want to take that risk, Emma, I’d drop this. Find, I don’t know, another way.”
Waiting for the island to crumble, waiting for storms to sweep us out to sea—there was no other way that ended with us alive. “I’m good with the risk.”
I stripped vines, one after another, until my hands were cracked and bleeding and the sun was high in the sky. I wished I could forget we couldn’t stay. Then the waterfall would be swirling around us as my mouth collided with Alex’s, his arms pulling me closer, my fingers in his hair. We’d almost forget to hold ourselves above water.
Henri dumped a handful of seashells on the beach mid-morning as I cracked open a coconut. She loved searching the sand for any treasures the tide kicked up. She’d already made two necklaces long enough to wrap around her neck three times over, not including the one that broke. I was glad she had something to keep her out of our way.
Henri eyed me as I dug around her bag and came to the tampons. My period was the week before, but there were still so many left.
“Henri, you haven’t had another period, have you?”
She fed a shell onto her thread. “Guess not.”
“But you had one right after we got here, right? It’s been two months. You—”
“What are you asking, Emma? Are you asking if it’s Jesse’s baby or Alex’s?”
I froze. “Don’t even joke like that.”
“Do you trust Alex? Or the better question is, do you trust me? Are you doing the math, Em? Gavin’s baby, Jesse’s baby, Alex’s?”
Not only was I sure Alex hadn’t touched her, I was sure she couldn’t be pregnant. This was another of her mind games. “Henri. Be serious. You really haven’t had a period?”
“Don’t be stupid. It’s probably malnutrition or something.” Her lips twitched with a smile. “Or is it?” Her voice stayed light, teasing. Vicious.
If she thought she could make me doubt Alex, she was overestimating herself.
Alex cupped his hands around his mouth. “Let’s give it a whirl,” he called. He stood far off in the surf, testing the buoyancy of pieces we’d constructed.
My sister’s shadow moved along behind me as I walked to the edge of the water.
“Cozy,” she said.
The whole mass of it was no bigger than one of Henri’s closet doors. We’d fit, but barely.
“Well, it’s not big enough yet, but it looks like it’s gonna float.” Alex sank his knees onto the platform. Water seeped between the bamboo, but it held his weight above the surface.
He tossed his clothes on the shore. “Guess I’m the guinea pig.”
“You can’t do that,” I said. “Not with your hand.”
“Oh come on, Jones. It’s just floating. Besides, my hand doesn’t hurt as bad in the water.”
I stripped off my T-shirt and threw it onto the dry sand above the waterline. “I’ll go too. We need to know how much weight it’ll carry.”
The raft wobbled beneath me as I struggled to find my balance. Henri looked surprised, then chewed her lip as our eyes met. She opened her mouth—I knew she didn’t want me to go, to leave her stranded on the shore. Still, something, maybe her pride, made her hold it in.
As Alex and I paddled farther from the beach, the ocean grew colder against my palms and the water a darker blue. To keep my panic in check, I imagined I was floating in a concrete-bottomed pool.
“We got this.” Alex breathed deeper, paddled harder. “It’s working,” he said, almost like he could hardly believe the boards beneath us would be our rescue. “It’s working!”
We stopped a distance from the shore. Henri was a dot on the beach, so small, I could almost see the jungle right through her.
The bamboo cracked.
“Shit.” Alex grabbed for the end of an unraveling vine. In his panic, he tried with his bandaged hand and couldn’t grip.
The raft came apart and we both plummeted into the dark ocean.
I went down, down, down, where the ocean water got colder and blacker, like the day when Casey’s boat exploded and I pulled up Henri. My eyes stung as I opened them, searching the water.
My hand closed around Alex’s shoulder. But the ocean knocked us apart.
I reached for him again, something, anything. Water slipped through my fingers. My lungs nearly bursting as the water lightened. Gasping, I broke the surface.
Waves crashed over me, dragging me back under. I popped up again and Alex was far ahead of me already, so much closer to the shore.
The distance between us was growing fast. He was leaving me behind. But he wouldn’t. That’s when I knew.
The tide—it had caught me and not him. And it was pulling me out to sea.
I fought hard to stay afloat. There was only so long I could swim before my muscles would give out. Alex made it to the shore and flipped around to the ocean. He yelled something I couldn’t understand. Not with waves pounding my ears.
I remembered. My arms burned through the water as I swam parallel to the shore. That was how to get out of a riptide.
A clear voice cut through. Another voice: “Harder, Emma!”
Henri.
I could hear her, but I couldn’t see her. A wave rolled over me, knocking me under and stealing my breath. When I broke the surface, I scanned the shoreline.
Once. Twice. No Henri.
Then finally, there she was, struggling as Alex held her back. She lunged toward the water, but Alex’s arms tensed across her body.
The ocean around me stilled. I moved free of the riptide, and swam until my feet touched bottom.
Henri broke free from him. I was close enough to see the tears streaming down her face. She socked him in the chest and stormed off into the jungle. Alex ran toward me.
Dark clouds moved across the spaces in the trees above. It had to be late afternoon. With my arms above my head, I stretched out on my back beside the fire, wearing my bikini and Alex’s shirt while my shorts dried.
“We’ll keep trying,” he said. “If you want to.”
I nodded.
“We’ll make it stronger next time. Tie the pieces individually, so if we lose one, the whole thing won’t separate. We can do this, Jones.”
What happened out there, there was a fine line between being reckless and taking chances. After his hand, the rains, the rockslide, what we were doing felt more and more like a chance worth taking. “I know.”
Alex balanced a fish wrapped in wet leaves over the bowl above the fire before he lowered down beside me. He brushed my hair back, pressed his lips to my neck, and I closed my eyes.
The trees rustled.
“Did you hear that?”
His breath tickled my neck as he smiled. “You don’t have to create a distraction if you want me to stop.”
“No, really, I thought that was Henri.” She hadn’t come back since the riptide.
“What if it was Henri?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m not trying to be a jerk. I just want to know.” He twirled a curl of my hair around his finger. “Are you afraid she’s going to tell your parents or something, when you’re back home?” Alex stared over my shoulder and focused on something in the distance. “Okay, I did hear that.”
I glanced around the clearing. Silence
. But a heartbeat later, there it was. A thrashing and crashing of something bursting through the vegetation.
Henri appeared at the place where the clearing met the trees. Something she was dragging made a long impression in the dirt that wound into the trees behind her.
The front piece of a canoe, with the back end busted off, bumped over bulging roots.
Alex jogged to her side and ran his good hand along the smooth curve of the wood. “That’s a pretty fabulous find. I wish we knew how to fix it.”
“I’m not worried about fixing it. I found it down the beach and I think it’ll make a perfect ceiling to my shelter.”
“Your shelter?” I said.
Henri pressed on, hauling it over a thick root. “Yep. I’m moving out of the honeymoon suite. It’s all yours, Em, and so is he.”
With that, she dragged the canoe deeper into the jungle.
Raindrops splattered against our rooftop as Alex and I lay awake in our shelter.
In the larger clearing with the thinner trees, Henri had lifted her canoe above stacks of driftwood and called it a shelter. She went inside after sunset and hadn’t come out.
The drizzle outside had turned into a full-fledged rain—I could tell because the plinking on our roof now made a hammering sound. We’d waterproofed our shelter with every stray tarp the ocean carried us. Henri’s beat-up canoe couldn’t have been waterproof.
Her games were only getting nastier. First Alex’s hand and now sleeping under that canoe. Willingly making herself miserable—maybe that was her way of letting me know how far she’d let this go.
“Why don’t you sleep up here with me?” Alex asked.
I glanced to the tent flap.
I knew Henri wasn’t sleeping. At home, she always had the worst kind of insomnia. Long after the city went silent, she’d stay up playing music or organizing love letters from stupid boys. Crackling with electricity—that was Henri.
“I’m fine here.”
He crawled down beside me. “Take the hammock.”
A Map for Wrecked Girls Page 21
