“What do you mean ‘not safe’?”
“You know what I mean,” she replied pointedly. And I did. I knew our father took his anger out on Alexa, sometimes with words, sometimes leaving bruises and welts on her skin.
Seeing my sister this way, I didn’t want to leave her all alone. I offered to drop out of Drake Rosemont and return to my old high school so she’d have an ally, but she shook her head.
“I say this because I love you: You got away, now stay away.”
“I don’t want to stay away. I want to be with you.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Of course I’m going to worry!”
She wrapped her arms around herself—maybe because she was cold (she was always cold), maybe because she needed to comfort herself. “I don’t have to stick around here forever, you know. I’m eighteen. I could go anywhere.”
“Where would you go?”
That’s when she faltered. Her bravado had more holes in it than Swiss cheese.
“Just don’t worry,” she repeated.
But I did.
That Thanksgiving, Mel didn’t know about my conversation with my sister. She was too busy chatting with my father about this and that. He could be charming when he wanted to be—that was his trick. How he fooled people. So she remained ignorant of certain things, the most important things. She didn’t even suspect anything when I asked her if I could start staying at her place during breaks. She just figured I preferred the wildness of her house to the formality of mine. Ironically, she clung to the idea that my family was some stereotypical ideal. A Rockwell painting. I knew she meant it as a compliment, but still I was embarrassed. And upset. Though she was my best friend, she had no idea how many skeletons I hid in the closet.
“Did you hear me?” she asked, shaking me into the present. “I’m going to take the first shift—patrolling the area. Betty and Anne Marie said they’d keep an eye on the fire. So you’re free to sleep for a while, if you want.”
“I think I’ll go for a swim,” I replied, getting up. “I’m too stressed to sleep.”
“Suit yourself.”
Though the night had cooled the jungle, Conch Lake was still the temperature of bathwater. It sloshed gently around my face as I floated on my back, kicking my feet, watching stars flicker in the sky. They were much brighter here than they were at home, almost like they were different stars altogether.
Water plugged my ears until I heard nothing but the lake itself: lapping, lulling, alive. I felt shut in. Cradled. I loved the feeling—it reminded me of swim lessons at Drake Rosemont. At the end of our sessions, the instructor usually let us have a few minutes to ourselves. I always looked forward to that time, when I could just float. In the water, I didn’t think or worry. It was as if I were suspended above my problems.
The air felt brisk when I emerged and rejoined the other girls. Ming and Avery had given up trying to sleep. Now they were sitting around Rittika, who was standing. She spoke animatedly. All eyes were fixed on her long limbs, caramel skin, and flashbulb-bright teeth. She was like Helen of Troy, the definition of perfect female beauty.
Staring at her, I felt a familiar gnawing of envy and admiration. I wasn’t sure which I wanted more, to hate her or be her friend—or maybe both? All I knew for sure was that in the world of teenage girls, Rittika’s looks gave her staggering power.
Google revealed that Rittika wasn’t the only gorgeous girl in her family. Her mother was a former Miss World. When I looked at old pictures of her on the web, I saw that Mrs. Singh had been every bit as stunning as Rittika was now. It seemed unfair that any family should have such good genes.
I was still studying Rittika when the newcomers arrived. They came from the jungle, drawn by the smoke, our voices, and the moony glow of bare skin, the glisten of Rittika’s in particular. From behind the trees came three—tall, broad-shouldered, smelling of moss, musk, blood, and earth. We identified them first by the long shape of their shadows.
“The boys!” Ming screeched.
Chester, Rish, and Pablo—they had survived.
As soon as I spotted them, I was as giddy as I was relieved. Chester, in particular, always made me feel this way. All I had to do was look at him and I felt completely different: more alert and alive. They were ecstatic upon seeing us, too. Bear hugs all around, and Chester swung a few of us around like rag dolls, me included. I loved the feel of his strong arms around me. Rish and Rittika couldn’t stop clinging to each other.
The boys were freaked out, torn up, and thirsty as hell. We took them to the outcrop, where they drank and drank. Chester lay there, belly-down, letting the water slosh around his body. Afterward, we all sat close to the fire and talked. Rish and Chester said they’d crashed near each other, then wandered for hours, calling our names. They’d met Pablo somewhere in the middle of the jungle. Along the way, they also met a little monkey that had started to follow them.
“It was the strangest creature. Totally tame,” Rish said, “like someone’s pet or something.”
“How did you find us?” Mel asked.
“The fire,” Pablo said. “Chester saw it first. The closer we got, the more sure I was you guys were hunters or poachers. We had our swords out, just in case!”
Pablo smiled and motioned to Chester’s fencing bag—their sole remaining possession from the crash. It had a few blades in it, Chester’s mask and uniform, and some peanut shells. The boys—and the monkey—had devoured the nuts hours ago.
Pablo’s smile disappeared when we told him about Jeremiah.
“And Warren?” he asked.
“We haven’t seen him,” Mel said. “We were hoping you had.”
“We looked for everybody. But all we found was wreckage.”
For the first time, Mel and I told the others about the pilot’s missing leg and eye.
Rittika shot me a scornful look. “You could’ve mentioned that before, Samantha,” she said. I shrugged, unwilling to admit that I’d been waiting for Mel to say it first.
“I had a bad feeling about that pilot,” Pablo said.
“Why do you say that?” asked Rittika.
“I mean, what kind of pilot has only one good eye?”
She gaped at him. “You didn’t have a bad feeling when you got a free flight!”
I sighed, thinking that was a nasty thing to say. Like me, Pablo was at Drake Rosemont on a scholarship. Everyone assumed it was a sports scholarship because he was a good fencer. Either way, the bottom line was the same: Without Mr. Singh’s generosity, he wouldn’t have been able to afford the trip to Japan. And neither would I.
“Look, I’m not blaming your father for the crash,” he said.
“Indirectly, you kind of were,” she replied.
“Come on, that’s enough,” Rish said, putting his hand on his sister’s shoulder. “No one’s blaming anyone. It was an accident—a terrible accident.”
“That’s right,” agreed Chester. “And it’s in the past. We’re here now and we have to deal with it.”
Rish nodded. “We should go through the wreckage,” he said. “See what’s there. Maybe there’s something useful. A radio or something.”
“We should look for Warren,” said Pablo.
“I don’t think we should do anything right now,” replied Mel, looking at the night sky. “Tomorrow, when it’s light, we’ll search.”
“We’ll be rescued in the morning,” Rittika said confidently. “By now my father must have hundreds of men looking for us.”
“Thank god,” Avery added.
We talked more about when we might be rescued, how, and by whom. Everyone except Chester, who seemed preoccupied with the fire. He was nervous and restless, intermittently throwing things into the flames: leaves, coconut shells, vines, branches. Most of the girls laughed, but I didn’t. We were in enough trouble without his antics. They were okay at fencing practice, but not here.
Suddenly, the fire sprayed sparks—Chester had thrown in a rotting log. Flames
darted out in all directions, dangerously close to where we huddled. Most of the girls screeched, pulling back. Mel stood up. Knowing that he had their attention, Chester took off his shirt and beat his chest like Tarzan. Then he picked up Rittika, who laughed, and pretended to toss her in, too. After she playfully slapped him, he put her down.
Soon Rish got in on the act. The two boys circled the fire, daring each other closer to the flames. The shapes of their bodies were exaggerated by the interplay of shadow and light. Rish looked leaner and sleeker, and Chester superhumanly strong. His wide back flexed powerfully. His arms looked as thick as nautical rope. He moved as if the world ought to make way for him. Usually that bravado made him appealing, but right now it terrified me.
The boys began wrestling perilously close to the wild flames. Rish’s shoe literally touched the fire. Seeing that, Pablo stood up and tried to plant himself between them. Mel got up, too.
“Stop!” she yelled. “The last thing we need is another person getting hurt.”
To my surprise, the boys heeded her command. Chester, chastened, put down a conch shell he’d wanted to throw into the fire. Rish sat beside his sister. She leaned into him affectionately. I enjoyed watching the twins together. They were about the same height and seemed to mirror each other’s beauty. They also communicated effortlessly—without even talking sometimes. I’d see them exchange meaningful looks or gestures, and wondered what they meant.
Moments later, Chester sat down on the other side of Rittika. He picked leaves and put them between her toes. She slapped his hands away playfully. I sighed. Just as the sun always sets, Rittika was always flanked by boys. On one side, Rish. On the other, one of any in a long line of admirers.
Although we had pretty well exhausted ourselves by then, Mel reminded Anne Marie, Betty, and me of our duties for the night. Hearing our plan, the boys volunteered to help. They agreed to take the next shift and patrol. Anne Marie volunteered to keep the fire going for a while. The rest of us lay down on the ground and tried to sleep. We nestled close to one another, though the air was still horribly humid, even by the fire. I struggled on the ground, twisting and turning, scraping my skin and brushing off insects. I doubted I’d be able to sleep under these circumstances. I felt totally exposed and totally vulnerable. As I gazed into the darkness of the jungle, scenes from various horror movies flashed through my head.
To get them out of my mind, I tried to think of soothing things: chicken noodle soup, the sound of rain on the rooftop of our house, the threadbare Chewbacca stuffed animal I’d had since I was a little kid. But these thoughts didn’t ease my worry. My eyes kept flicking from the fire back to the murky jungle. It was all too easy to imagine beastly eyes peeping out from it.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard footsteps nearby. The crackle of breaking twigs. A low voice. But then I realized it was only the boys out patrolling.
Thoughts of Chester at least distracted me from my paranoia. I remembered the very first time I’d seen him fencing, at an open house hosted by the Drake Rosemont boys’ and girls’ fencing teams. Knowing he’d be there, I’d dragged Mel to the third floor of the gym and signed our names on an attendance sheet.
That night I was under no illusion that I’d be able to get Chester’s attention. He was gorgeous, after all, and I was what I was: skinny, prone to acne, not particularly athletic, and tongue-tied at the sight of him. But my logic was this: If I joined the fencing team, I could at least watch him on a daily basis.
For weeks, Mel and I had worked on fencing basics: footwork, bladework, lunges, target practice on a wall-mounted bull’s-eye. To get in better shape, we had to run up and down flights of stairs, play leapfrog, skip rope, and do so many sit-ups, pull-ups, and push-ups our bodies ached. When Coach Coifman had finally deemed us fit, we got to fence. To my surprise, I learned that I loved the absolute concentration fencing required. When I planned and executed an attack, all the other junk that normally cluttered my brain fell by the wayside.
I fenced against anyone who would have me: boys, girls, freshmen, seniors, veterans, and amateurs. One day I found myself on the fencing strip with Rittika, captain of the girls’ team. At first, she took it easy on me. She even gave me some pointers. I racked up several points easily, too easily, and still she made no move to strike. Just as I gained confidence, though, she changed. Her blade was suddenly forceful, her attack precise and ruthless.
By then I’d received hundreds of touches and lashes, but this one felt different. Rittika went hard at my shoulder. I lost my balance, landing on my backside. I cried out more in embarrassment than pain. Chester, captain of the boys’ team, rushed to my side. I didn’t want my first contact with him to involve whimpering and shame, but I didn’t have any choice. He pulled me up to my feet. I removed my mask, wiped the tears from my eyes, and tried to retain some semblance of dignity.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s ice packs in the equipment room.”
As I followed him, I swear I saw Rittika smirk.
The third-floor equipment room was large and maze-like, not so much one room as a long, wide corridor with alleys of storage space on either side. The fencing area was at the very end of the corridor. A hodgepodge of masks, sneakers, gloves, cables, blades, and scoring machines teetered on towering industrial shelves. Fluorescent bulbs, evenly spaced along the ceiling, offered cold, stark light. The room stank of sweat and dirty laundry. I couldn’t think of a less romantic place to be, and yet I felt a high-voltage charge of excitement. Despite my shoulder, despite my tear-streaked face, I was thrilled to have a moment alone with Chester.
He rifled through a cooler and found a blue plastic freeze pack. He pressed it to my shoulder, then told me to hold it there.
“You have a plastron?” he asked.
“Plastron?” I said weakly.
“You should have a plastron.” He looked at me steadily. His eyes were kind, yet serious. In my daydreams I’d pictured them as blue. They were gray. “I’m surprised Rittika didn’t give you one.”
With a sigh, he retrieved a box from a shelf. It occurred to me that he had escorted me here not because of any latent desire to be alone with me, but because he was trying to be responsible. I was an obligation, that was all. The realization stung as much as the ache in my shoulder.
“This is a plastron,” he announced, holding what looked like a cropped white shirt cut in half.
“Oh.”
“You’re supposed to wear this every time you practice.”
I nodded mutely.
“Go on, then. Put it on.”
I started to put it over my uniform. “No, no,” he said. “It goes under your jacket.”
More embarrassed than ever, I took off my fencing jacket. Underneath, my sports bra was soaked with sweat. Even worse—it had nothing to support. It would have been impossible for me to feel any more self-conscious than I did right then. I struggled to put on the plastron, unsure of where a dangling, Velcro-tipped strip was supposed to go. Chester reached behind my back, his arms around me for a moment, then secured the strip across my chest.
“There you go,” he said, still close. I dared to look up at his expression. It was completely neutral.
“Thanks,” I whispered. He took a small step back and looked at my face.
“You related to Rish and Rittika?”
Now it was my turn to sigh. “That’s right—all of us Indians are cousins.”
“All right, silly question! Not all billion of you can be related. You just look a little like Rittika is all.”
I hesitated. On the one hand, I was offended by his assumption. It was a sore point for me. I was frequently held up against the handful of Indians enrolled at Drake Rosemont, as if we were all interchangeable. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but take the comparison to Rittika, the prettiest girl at school, as a compliment.
“I think it’s more that she looks a little like me,” I said, surprised at myself.
He laughed. “Well, listen, Sam
antha. You remember to wear your plastron, okay? It’ll save you from bruises like the one you’re gonna have for the next couple of weeks. Another piece of advice: Don’t underestimate Rittika. She’s the girls’ captain for a reason: She’s a beast!”
Was she ever, I thought.
He held my gaze, and again I was struck by the sincerity of his expression. It was entirely possible, I thought, that Chester Motega was a nice person. A regular person. What a revelation.
I wanted to ask him more questions, like what kind of music did he listen to, did he have brothers or sisters, what was his favorite flavor of ice cream, did he want to meet me in the soccer field that night where we could gaze at the stars and make out? But in a flash, he turned and started walking toward the exit. I followed, pressing a freeze pack to my shoulder and staring at his butt.
I smiled at the recollection, lost briefly in memory, but then remembered what was happening. Whatever issues I had at Drake Rosemont were nothing compared to what I was facing now. I stared at the fire, wondering and worrying when my shift would start. Maybe I should get up and find out, but I was too nervous to move.
The next thing I knew, minutes had passed—or hours? I must have fallen asleep. What awakened me was not the boys telling me it was time to start my shift, or a rescuer coming to save us.
It was a chilling cry for help.
I sat bolt upright. What awful thing had happened now—had another classmate died?
My first thought was that it was Anne Marie. But I soon learned it was Avery who was in trouble. Everyone crowded around her; even the boys returned. We tried to make sense of what she was saying through chokes and sobs. Something about being touched. Touched down there. In the light of the campfire, her face was a teary mask of terror. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.
“Calm down, it’s all right now,” Betty said soothingly. “Tell us what happened.”
“I heard this sound, this chittering sound,” Avery sputtered. “And then … and then …”
“And then what?”
“He crawled over my legs. A man. A man got on top of me and tried to … to touch me.”
Damselfly Page 4
