Rites of Spring (Break) il-3

by Diana Peterfreund

  “Bullshit!” Demetria yelled crossing the deck from my side to the family’s. “We all know anyway. And your stupid secrets almost got Amy murdered tonight. She was certainly assaulted. And certainly kidnapped. Don’t you think you’d better explain it to Darren before he has to face the police?”

  “No!” Kurt Gehry said, and rose. “I will not have you using your hatred of me to destroy my son.”

  “How about my hatred of your son?” Demetria said. “There is no way I’m letting this get swept under the rug. He did who knows what to Amy, and I think he did it with the help of drugs that you or your wife obtained illegally. I don’t need a doctor to tell me what she was on tonight. We’ve seen your wife on the same shit. Rohypnol, huh, Darren?” she hissed at the boy, and his mother held him closer. “Pretty smart of you, with the blue Gatorade. Quite the date rapist in training. Now you’re in real trouble, and there is no way I’m letting any of you get away with it.”

  “Demetria,” Clarissa said.

  “You will do nothing of the sort,” Gehry insisted.

  “How you gonna stop us?” Demetria said. “You can’t do anything. You can’t keep us here.”

  “Listen, you bitch…” Gehry said.

  “You have no idea what a bitch I’m going to be,” she replied.

  “Stop.” I pushed to my feet, wavering, and they did stop. I looked at Darren, tearful and bloody, on the other side of the deck. I looked at his mother, cradling him in her arms, the blood from his head soaking into her sweater. She looked all too sober right now. I looked at his father, broken, battered, and crazy with concern over his child.

  That was a first. Clarissa’s dad would humiliate her in front of all his Digger friends. Malcolm’s father had dropped him the second his son had declared anything that jarred with his own worldview. But Kurt Gehry, evil patriarch, hypocritical lawmaker, all-around jerk—everything he’d done had been to protect his children, however misguided, however damaging it had ended up being. And nothing had changed. Even after seeing what Darren had done, he was still fighting for him. He’d been a real dad.

  No wonder Darren loved him so much. No wonder Darren had gone to such insane lengths to protect his father, in turn. The teen looked so tiny, so lost in the shadows on the deck. I remembered playing darts with him, making costumes. He’d been trying so hard to impress us all. Too hard.

  “I’m not pressing charges,” I said.

  “What!” shouted voices all around me. I put a hand to my head.

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “Amy, you aren’t thinking clearly,” Demetria said. “You’ve been drugged—”

  “Nothing happened,” I said. “It could have. I’m not going to lie about that. But…” I tried to shake my head and failed. “This was a really bad mistake.”

  “It was a crime!” Demetria insisted.

  “There are a lot of those going around.”

  A couple of months ago, I was terrified that Dragon’s Head was going to call the police because I’d broken into their tomb. And yet, I’d never once considered pressing charges against the society members for ruining my textbooks or pouring drinks all over me. It was all fun and games. Part of the package for society members. Last semester, we’d broken into Micah Price’s apartment and filled it with rats, and none of us was facing jail time. This was society culture. This was what Darren had been taught to idolize. He was just too young to see the distinction between mischievous and truly dangerous.

  And maybe there was no distinction. Poe had ended up in the hospital after we’d broken into Dragon’s Head. What if his wounds had been worse? What if Micah’d had his finger bitten off by one of those rats? What if I’d slipped on the icy sidewalk Dragon’s Head had left for me and broken my neck? What if any of our supposedly innocent society pranks had gone horribly wrong? Would it be one of us trying to figure out if we could plead down from felony to misdemeanor and wishing we still had the parachute of under-eighteen to keep us from ruining our lives? Except Darren wouldn’t have that parachute, either. He was too famous. The son of Kurt Gehry was media fodder, and if he got arrested after his father’s fall from grace, given his father’s notoriety, well, he would be destroyed, plain and simple.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was angry at him. Furious! And every time I thought about those terrified moments on the other island, every time I remembered the feeling of tipping over the side of the boat, every time I recalled the very large suspicion I’d had that I would not be surviving the night, I wanted nothing more than to see him eviscerated. By the press, by large, mangy dogs—whatever.

  But looking at him lying there on the other side of the boat, broken, frustrated, desperate…looking at the whole family…He’d already been eviscerated. What more could a juvenile court probation accomplish? I thought about how he was fourteen, and he thought he knew everything. And how I was eight years older than that and I couldn’t even imagine how much I didn’t know.

  Darren had been so wrong, but what he’d showed me was that a lot of what we did in Rose & Grave without even thinking about it was every bit as wrong.

  “Amy, please. I’m begging you. Reconsider this,” Demetria said.

  She could. She could reconsider it, once I told her that Darren had poisoned them as well. I took a few shaky steps past her, to Kurt Gehry, and spoke in low tones. “You’re going to fix this. Whatever it takes.”

  “Yes.”

  “For real. If you decide to ignore it, forget it…well, I won’t.”

  “I understand.” He grabbed my hand as if to seal the bond. “Thank you.” I winced when his fingers closed around raw skin, and he dropped my hand in horror.

  “I want to leave.”

  Demetria was shaking her head. “Amy, please, please…”

  “I want to leave.” I wavered on my feet. “Please.” I looked around the boat at my friends, but their expressions were unsure. Where was Poe? Jamie would help me. Wouldn’t he?

  Except, where was he now?

  Demetria sighed. “Fine.” She turned to Kadie Myer, still on the dock. “Have you used your shampoo?”

  “What?” The older girl’s eyes narrowed. “No. Why?”

  “Don’t. I’m buying you a new bottle. Will you take us off this island? Tonight?”

  Kadie looked at her husband, who spoke up. “As soon as we can get the boat. Yes. Anyone who wants to go.”

  Demetria turned to Jenny. “Can you pack up?”

  Jenny nodded. “Absolutely.” She and Odile took off.

  I sat down on the deck again and leaned my head back. Good. We were leaving.

  “As soon as we get the boat back…” Frank was saying to Clarissa, and in the distance, I heard sirens.

  It was over.

  ***

  But of course, it wasn’t over. I slept through the police boat’s arrival and subsequent dismissal, but from the story that Kevin told me later, they were all too happy to get off Cavador Key as soon as they were told the police call was a misunderstanding, a “boating accident.” “Salt and Gehry put on an Academy Award level performance,” he said. “Quite astounding, really.”

  “And the rest of them?”

  “Stayed out of it!”

  I remember getting on the Myers’ yacht, but not why it took so long, and blessedly, I don’t remember a single moment of the trip back to the mainland.

  Somehow, I wound up in a fine hotel suite in town (possibly on Jenny’s dime and Odile’s reputation), cocooned inside a massive white comforter, while my fellow knights debated about whether or not to send me home to Ohio. I remember that conversation for sure. Because I remember sitting up and telling them no.

  “I don’t agree with a lot of your judgment calls lately, Amy,” Demetria said.

  “I don’t care,” I replied. If I went home now, I didn’t know if I’d ever come back again.

  “But, Amy,” Clarissa said, “you have to tell your parents.”

  I compromised and told my folks I’d been in that alleged
boating accident (true) and got tangled up in some ropes (also true), and was banged up a bit, but was okay now (remained to be seen). My mother started crying, and my father begged me to spend the rest of Spring Break at home, where they could keep an eye on me. I basked in their parental love and concern, but I told them I’d rather go build houses in Louisiana with my friends, as planned.

  Within a day—thanks to Odile’s no-fail detox diet—I felt back to normal, with nothing more than the scabs on my wrists and ankles to show what had happened to me. From what I was conscious for, there had been a lot of debate among the other members of the club about whether or not they could pursue a case against Darren Gehry without my consent, or barring that, if they could just leak it to the media.

  The oath of fidelity was invoked quite a lot. It was my secret, and they were sworn to keep it. As soon as I felt up to the argument, I told them all about Darren’s confession to me on the island, and explained his strange conviction that everything he was doing was par for the course in society pranks.

  “But how could he possibly conflate kidnapping and what we do?” Clarissa asked, baffled.

  “What we do?” Demetria said, and I practically saw the bulb light itself over her head. “Like breaking and entering? And robbery?”

  “And vandalism,” said Ben.

  “And hacking and stalking, and…assault.” Jenny bit her lip, and I could see the figure of Micah Price looming large before all of us. “We’re pretty bad.”

  No one wants to be shown just how low their moral high ground really is. After that, most of the others came around to my way of thinking, and those who didn’t at least respected my decision.

  It bothered me a lot that Poe never called. I don’t remember seeing him on the dock that night, but then again, I couldn’t remember much beyond the stricken faces of the Gehrys.

  I stopped Clarissa the following afternoon. I was sitting on the couch of the suite, pretending to watch videos and veg out while I fretted over the situation. “Do people…know where we are?” I asked.

  “Malcolm called yesterday,” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t want visitors yet. He’s going back to Alaska, but I’m sure…”

  “No, that’s fine,” I said. Malcolm had called. But what about Poe?

  That evening, while we were repacking to leave for Louisiana, Josh and Lydia phoned from Spain. The knights had left him a message earlier, asking about the legal ramifications, and Lydia was frantic to know that I was okay. I allayed their fears and reiterated to Josh that there was no way I was pursuing charges against Darren, but all the while I wondered what our patriarch who was actually in law school thought about the matter.

  During the long drive up the Gulf Coast with the other Diggers, I finally got to hear bits and pieces of the story from the others’ point of view.

  WHAT I KNOW FOR SURE

  1) They hadn’t decided that I’d broken the plates in the tomb that day. In fact, Poe had never even brought it up. They were still blaming the campers on the other island by the time Clarissa and Odile reported that I was missing late that afternoon.

  2) In his rush, Darren had left his backpack (name conveniently sewed inside) behind on the beach, along with the bottle of bright blue Gatorade and my flip-flops, which must have fallen off when he dragged me to the boat. Inside the backpack was the empty bottle of ipecac syrup and some broken pieces of china. “Trophies,” Demetria had said with a shudder.[14]

  3) They’d gone to the Gehrys to see if Darren knew where I was, but found the Gehrys had little clue as to their son’s whereabouts, which is when Demetria and Ben put two and two together about the location of the backpack and the missing rowboat.

  “But how did you know that he’d taken me against my will?” I asked Demetria.

  “Well, Amy, it’s not exactly a secret that you don’t like the water,” Jenny said.

  Odile looked up. “It was Jamie. Jamie knew you weren’t about to get into a boat.”

  “Where’s Jamie now?” I asked.

  But no one knew the answer to that question. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to ask them where he’d been while I was being rescued that night. Would they find it odd that I cared? And, more important, would I hate the answer?

  ***

  Two days later, I was enjoying the catharsis one derives from a well-stocked nail gun in a small bayou town in Louisiana. The days were long and no one in the Diggers’ crew (who, for the purposes of the trip, were undercover as nothing more than a group of friends) was going to win any cuisine awards at the end of the week. Still, the work and lifestyle kept my mind off all the things I wanted to obsess about: the future, Darren, and Poe. I’ll tell you this: I hadn’t had one nightmare about drowning since I’d started sleeping on a church floor with fifteen other ersatz construction workers. (And only once had the memory of Poe and me in the shower house made me flush red from something other than the southern sun.)

  I was stacking roofing tiles when George approached, hands in pockets. “Your tattoo is showing,” he said.

  I yanked my tank top down in back, but then wondered why I’d bothered. Clarissa had been sailing around all week with her shoulder-blade symbol flying free. Demetria’s tattoo was almost always on display, but you barely recognized it in the midst of all her other ink. And still, no one had seen Jenny’s. I was starting to suspect she didn’t have one.

  George looked at the ground for a second. “Have you spoken to Jamie recently?”

  “No.”

  He nodded, slowly. “I was just wondering what he thought about the no-pressing-charges thing.”

  “Yeah, I was wondering myself,” I said, then laughed. “He’s probably fine with it, though. He’s so gung ho about our status above the law. Wouldn’t want me to do anything to hurt the society.”

  George’s expression turned confused. “What do you mean, Amy? He’s the one who called the police.”

  “What?”

  George shook his head. “Didn’t you know? Jenny couldn’t get any reception with her battered cell phone, and Salt wouldn’t let anyone use the radio on the island’s boat. He insisted he be the one behind the wheel if we went out to the other island to look for you guys. Such a bastard. I can’t wait until we’re on the Trust board and can fire his ass.”

  “But…Jamie?” I asked. Stay on subject, George.

  “Yeah, so we figured Salt was trying to protect the Gehrys at that point, and we were all pretty angry, but when Salt wouldn’t budge, Jamie jumped on the Myers’ yacht and released the rope so Kurt Gehry and Salt couldn’t follow him aboard. It drifted out and he radioed the police. That’s when we left to get you.”

  “And he couldn’t get back?”

  “Well, docking’s pretty hard,” George explained. “Even for people who have driven boats before.” And Poe hadn’t. “Malcolm had to actually swim out to get him, I heard. By the time they came back to the slip, you were asleep, I guess. Didn’t you talk to them when we got on the boat to leave?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t even remember getting on the boat. Had I brushed past Poe without even acknowledging him, without even thanking him for trying to help?

  No wonder he hadn’t called me! After he went out of his way to get to the police, endangering himself and a significantly pricey piece of the Myers’ property, I’d refused to press charges.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t talked to him,” George said. “Considering.”

  I bit my lip. “That’s over.” More like a nonstarter.

  “Oh.”

  “What, does that surprise you?” I said, getting annoyed now. “You’re the one who told me he was a jerk.”

  George looked at me in surprise. “Do you really care what I think?”

  No. No, but…“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said at last. “Not with you.”

  “Fine,” he said, and picked up a box of nails. “But you should know that I don’t think he’s a jerk anymore.”

  “Thank you,” I said. As he turned
to go, I touched his shoulder. “And thank you, also, for saving my life.”

  George smiled his gorgeous smile. “That was cool, huh? I’ve never done anything like that before.”

  “It was very, very cool.”

  He walked away and I stared after him, watching various women on the crew drifting in his direction. I smiled. They absolutely couldn’t help it. Gorgeous, funny, charming, and in his spare time, he saved the lives of innocent coeds. And yes, I was completely grateful for that. But I didn’t feel the slightest compulsion to sleep with him again.

  I put down the nail gun and grabbed my cell phone, dialing the number from memory. It rang and rang, and when at last the answering machine played Poe’s voice, I hung up. What I had to say didn’t belong on a machine.

  ***

  “I’m never going to get the feel of powdered drywall out of my hair,” Clarissa whined. “And my manicurist is going to shoot me for what I’ve done to my nails.”

  “Do you regret it?” Demetria asked, pulling off I-91 and onto the quiet streets of New Haven.

  Clarissa grinned. “Not a minute.”

  “You’d better get it together,” Jenny said in mock warning. “I don’t want a CFO who isn’t presentable.”

  I smiled out the window. While others had used the road trip to get their futures in order, the drive up to Connecticut had given me too much spare time to ruminate on all the questions that remained unanswered. How long had Darren been spying on Poe and me to overhear our hypothetical plate-smashing plot? Would Gehry keep his promise to punish, rehabilitate, and, moreover, help his son? And what in the world would I say when I saw Poe?

  As the van rolled down Danbury Road, I came to a decision. “Hey, Demetria, can you pull over?”

  Demetria checked me out in the rearview mirror. “What? Why?”

  “There’s something I have to do.” I saw Poe’s block on the left. “Right here.”

  Odile checked out the neighborhood. “What do you have to do here? Buy crack?”

  “Isn’t this graduate student housing?” Jenny frowned and Harun covered her hand with his. “Oh.”