Ashley grinned and made big lazy circles with her hands on the surface of the water.
“Though Sapphire was a regular person,” she said. “Stone was a cat person, but it was a great secret. Not even his closest friend, Sapphire, knew the truth. Sapphire had become obsessed with finding the Dark Prince because only the Prince grew black violets. Black violets were flowers that bloomed only in deep dark water. In places so black and so cold, no mortal could reach their depths.”
Sid shuddered, looked into the water beneath him, and continued the story.
“Stone feared Sapphire’s obsession with the Dark Prince for he knew if he laid eyes on the Dark Prince, he would know the Prince’s true beauty. In Stone’s eyes, Sapphire would see the truth of the Dark Prince and she might leave him forever to live in the darkness with the Prince.”
Ashley snorted.
“Stone didn’t realize Sapphire had no interest in living with the Dark Prince. She only wanted the black violet because she, too, had a secret. She had been stricken with a terrible illness and would die within the year. The only remedy was a tea made from the petals of the black violet.”
Sid dunked under the water and popped back up, shifting again to his back as his legs had begun to grow achy from treading water.
“They scoured lands far and wide,” Sid continued, watching the cliffs of the quarry, particularly the Witch’s Cave, a black hollow named years earlier for a group of high school girls who’d been caught having a seance in it. They’d been attempting to resurrect their friend who’d fallen from the cliffs to her death a year earlier.
It was a tragic tale, and it had closed the pit for a time, but soon kids had started ignoring the no trespassing signs, and within a year, they’d returned to the quarry with an added fervor thanks to the untimely death of one of their own.
“Despite their search,” he continued, “they found no trace of the Dark Prince until one rainy afternoon…”
Ash followed Sid’s gaze to the cave, a gleam in her eye.
“They sought shelter from the storm in the Witch’s Cave on the jagged cliffs deep in the Shadow Forest. It was a perilous journey to the cave, and they clung to the rock, terrified of the bottomless black sea beneath it.”
Sid turned over, legs kicking beneath him. He glanced down at the dark water, wishing he’d forced the story in a less creepy direction. Of course, that was the point. They always wove the pit into the story, and they always dragged themselves out afterward, feeling as if they’d been courting death during their swim.
“As they plunged into the cave,” Ashley continued, “they spotted the purple flames of a fairy sage. The woman was not your typical fairy. She was old and wrinkled with black eyes and flimsy gray wings that looked like they’d been woven from spiderwebs. ‘Why have you come, she croaked?’”
Sid dipped his face in the water struck through with tendrils of sunlight. Through his blurred vision, he saw the gaping nothingness beneath them.
When he emerged, Ashley watched him expectantly, arms treading the water.
“We’ve come for the black violet, Stone told the fairy sage,” Sid began. “The fairy cackled and rolled her big black eyes. Her tongue darted out and licked her papery lips. Then you’ve come to the right place.” Sid’s breath had caught as he told the story and again, he pushed onto his back, contemplating the blue sky, embarrassed that he always ended up winded and panting before they finished the story.
“’The Dark Prince is down there,’ the sage shrieked,” Ashley announced in a gravelly voice. “And she pointed at the black water where no creature dared venture. It was known to be filled with ghosts and demons, monsters who preyed on the weak and innocent and the strong too. Sapphire blinked into the storm and knew she had no choice.”
Sid cleared his throat, calmer on his back. “Halfway down the cliff, Stone caught Sapphire. ‘It’s too risky, Sapphire. The violet isn’t worth it,’ he told her. But when their eyes locked, the truth passed between them. He understood that without the violet, Sapphire would die. Stone was terrified of the dark water, terrified of what would happen if he met the Dark Prince, but he understood he was the only one who could save Sapphire. ‘Go back to the cave,’ he yelled.” As Sid spoke the words, both he and Ashley’s eyes drifted up to the cave and above it to the top of the rocky cliff where Shane Savage stood pulling off his t-shirt.
9
The suspense of the story deflated between them. Sid imagined it like a little black balloon popping and drifting down into the murky depths.
“What’s he doing here?” Sid hissed.
Ashley lifted a hand from the water and waved.
“Don’t wave at him,” Sid said, trying to push her arm down.
Ash looked at him surprised. “He’s cool. I talked to him.”
“What? When?”
“I ran into him by Carl Lee’s rock yesterday.”
“Why was he there?” Sid demanded.
“He’s got a cousin who lives on our side of town.”
“Well, I don’t like him,” Sid said.
“Who said you had to?” Ashley asked.
Sid frowned, frustrated Ashley didn’t offer to drop Shane Savage then and there. Shane - with his stupid blond hair and his stupid skateboard covered in stupid stickers.
“The Thrashers are probably behind him. Are we going to be friends with them now too?” he complained.
“Take a chill pill,” she told him, splashing water his way. “He doesn’t even like those guys. Let’s get out and warm up.”
“What about the story?” he asked, hating how whiny his voice sounded.
“We’ll finish it next time.”
Sid scowled as he paddled behind Ashley to the shore. She reached it before him, climbing the rocks lithely. He realized she should have been the cat in their story. As he struggled up the rocks, he figured he made a better walrus.
Ashley sat on a flat rock.
Shane made his way down the sloping cliff that surrounded the pit.
“Hey,” he said, waving. “You guys swim out here too?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Sid muttered under his breath.
Ashley shot him an annoyed look. “Yeah. Beach is too crowded,” Ashley explained.
“For me too,” Shane agreed.
He didn’t pause to chat, but plunged off the rocks into the cool water. He disappeared, and when his head popped above the surface, he was several yards into the quarry.
“Show off,” Sid grumbled too quietly for Ashley to hear.
Shane’s arms sliced through the water in long clean strokes. He tilted his head as he swam, appearing as if he took no breaths at all, but merely kept his head down. Sid had seen adults swim that way, but never kids.
He saw Ashley’s eyes follow Shane and thought he spotted a tinge of pink in her cheeks.
Shane returned and climbed the rocks, jumping from one to the next, already showing muscles in places Sid doubted he’d ever have any.
Shane dropped next to them, stretching his legs long.
“It’s so hot,” he announced.
“We noticed,” Sid griped, picking at a group of weeds poking through a crack in the rock.
“Super-hot,” Ashley agreed.
“Did you jump?” Shane asked gesturing to the cliff, not the top of the cliff, but the halfway point where the rock ledge jutted out and offered a less stomach-dropping option.
Ashley nodded.
“First thing I do every time. I saw you opted for the sissy jump,” she gestured to the space before them.
It wasn’t lost on Sid that he too had done the sissy jump.
“That’s my warm-up,” Shane said, springing to his feet and running up the rock.
He ‘supermanned' off the outcropping, tucking himself into a ball just before he hit the water.
Sid too tucked himself into a ball, pulling his legs in close and resting his chin on his knees.
Shane returned a minute later, dripping, a huge grin on his face.
“Superman, huh? I’ve seen toddlers do that trick,” Ashley told him.
Shane laughed and shook his wet hair at Ashley, spraying her with cold drops. A few of the droplets hit Sid’s legs, and he bared his teeth, which he’d clamped together to keep from speaking the rolling list of snide comments parading through his mind.
“I’d like to see you do better,” Shane challenged. “In fact, I dare you to do a flip.”
Ashley said nothing, just stood, wrung out her long dark hair and marched up the rock. She stepped to the edge, and Sid stared at her dark feet, toes relaxed.
If Sid stood on the ledge, his toes would grab the rock like talons and his eyes would be screwed shut.
A part of him wanted to cry out for Ashley not to jump. A stupid thing that might cause her to slip and make things worse. Not to mention he’d watched her jump a hundred times, but his eye had wandered to the Witch’s Cave and to the tumble of rocks that lay at the bottom of that steep drop. He tried not to think of the crumpled body of the girl who’d died on those rocks, her blood steadily washing into the dark water.
Ashley jumped, curling into a ball and flipping. She landed on her back, still curled up and disappeared into an explosion of sparkling water.
Shane whistled from the rock ledge.
“You’re up,” she called to him, “but I dare you to do a back-flip.”
Shane’s eyes widened a bit.
Sid saw the first hint of fear, and he relished the look, though it disappeared too quickly for him to truly enjoy it.
Shane bit his lip, turned to face the trees, and stepped to the edge.
Again, Sid wanted to yell out. He wasn’t Shane’s friend. What did he care if he fell? But he couldn’t do anything to help the fear instinct, a hot bubbling in his gut that made him want to demand they stop acting so crazy.
The same sensation made him want to cry at his own cowardice.
Ashley climbed from the water; her eyes glued to Shane.
Sid could have been invisible.
Shane leaped backward, contorting his body, but as his head started to roll back, he faltered. He fell to the water with his arms and legs splayed, hitting the surface with a crack.
“Back-smacker,” Ashley announced, clapping.
Shane’s face was red when he climbed out on the rocks, but he continued to smile. He shrugged.
“Backflips are freaky,” he admitted.
Sid expected Ashley to taunt him, but she didn’t. She sat back on the ground beside Sid.
“Yeah, I usually spaz at the last second too,” she admitted.
Sid sighed, a tad disappointed Ashley didn’t razz Shane for his flop, but grateful they seemed to have tired of the game.
“I’ve got a Dr. Pepper,” Shane said. He trotted to his clothes and pulled a bottle of the dark fizzy pop from the deep pocket of his shorts.
Sid eyed it thirstily.
Shane twisted off the cap and handed it to Ashley. She took a long drink, burped at the end, and gave it to Shane. He swallowed a gulp of the pop and then offered it to Sid.
Sid gazed at the soda, his mother’s ‘sugar will rot your teeth’ reminders floated through his mind, but mostly he thought of his lips touching the bottle where Ash’s lips had touched and Shane’s too. It felt like a deal, a pact of friendship if he drank from the bottle, an agreement that Shane was one of them.
He shook his head, eyes watering at the fizzy bubbles beneath his nose. He handed the bottle back to Shane.
“No thanks,” he said, forcing his chin lower into his knees.
Ashley’s eyes lingered on him, but she didn’t ask why he skipped the drink.
Shane didn’t seem to notice. He took another drink and then handed the bottle back to Ashley. They went back and forth that way until the last of the dark liquid disappeared.
Another group of kids showed up. They took turns jumping off the rock ledge. In the water they laughed and yelled and splashed each other. Sid pretended to watch them, but mostly he listened to Ashley and Shane talk about how bad Mr. Ferndale’s science lab sucked and how they both thought the new gym teacher rocked.
Sid had his own opinion about both teachers, opinions at odds with Ash and Shane. He loved Mr. Ferndale, who had given him special projects to work on at home, like making a volcano in a plastic bottle with vinegar, baking soda, and dish soap.
The new gym teacher, Mr. Curry, always smiled and laughed and slapped Sid on the back, encouraging him to run faster, put both hands together to hit the volleyball, or take part in some other way that left Sid panting and red-faced. Sid thought the teacher secretly hated him. He didn’t have any reason for his beliefs, but they plagued him just the same.
He dreaded gym class as much as social studies, a class Ashley wasn’t in, but Travis Barron was.
His favorite class was English with Mr. Wolf. It was Ashley’s favorite class too. Mr. Wolf could make anything they read interesting from Romeo and Juliet to Call of the Wild. Both of which Sid had enjoyed immensely.
The kids in the lake looked like high school kids, though they were likely not old enough to drive.
One girl shrieked as a boy picked her up off the cliff’s edge and jumped, holding her wriggling in his arms. Sid cringed as they fell toward the water.
Shane and Ashley didn’t seem to notice.
Sid’s butt started to tingle and grow numb. He stretched his legs out. They looked pale and soft, almost glowing in the sunlight. Ashley’s legs were dark. Her right knee was skinned where she’d fallen on the sidewalk the previous week when they’d been running home after school.
Shane’s legs were pale, but somehow they looked more like a man’s legs than Sid’s. Fine golden hairs coated his calves. Hair had appeared on Sid’s legs, but it grew in odd little patches, prickly and so white blond it looked the color of cat whiskers.
From his mother’s magazines, Sid had gathered he had an issue with self esteem But for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how he’d ever feel better about his body when guys like Shane Savage existed in the world.
Shane got up to pee in the woods.
Ashley leaned close to Sid.
“Let’s show him the raccoons,” she said.
Sid’s mouth dropped open as if Ashley had kicked him in the gut.
“What?” she asked, her expression so clueless he wanted to cry.
And he knew she really didn’t get it.
The raccoons belonged to them. Sid and Ashley. If they shared them with Shane, well… it would change everything.
“I don’t feel so hot. I think I’m just going to go home. You can show him the raccoons if you want.” Sid stood up and hastily pulled on his t-shirt.
“What? No. I thought we would work on their den some more. I thought-”
“Just call me later. Okay?” He started toward the trees.
Sid felt Ashley’s gaze follow him, but he couldn’t turn back. Tears had begun to well behind his eyes, and the moment he stepped into the woods they poured hot and fierce over his cheeks.
10
Max drove his motorcycle to a ramshackle house on the north end of town. It was the cutoff point for the school district, a desolate stretch of road the bus drivers grumbled about having to cover, especially during February and March when the snow drifts reached chest high levels and billowy days further reduced visibility to mere centimeters beyond the windshield.
In June, the spread of country road was anything but barren. The forest crowded in on either side of the baking concrete. Vines and weeds reached out, leaving their snaky entrails, smashed by pick-up trucks, smeared across the road.
Patches of farmland lay between the forests, the crops reeking of the latest fertilizer dump so potently in some areas, Max’s eyes watered beneath his helmet.
He found Vern Ripley’s house easily enough. It was the lone house on a large, desolate lot. The dilapidated farmhouse leaned heavily to the right where an oak tree, with a trunk roughly the size of a small car, stood as if
patiently waiting to catch the falling house.
The yard was choked and littered with the kind of debris that revealed Vern’s stepfather as a tinkerer who rarely finished projects. Cars on blocks, whole engines, and a sprinkling of tools and automotive parts lay strewn along the gravel path.
Max climbed off his bike as the screen door swung out, and a woman stepped onto the porch.
She held her hand up to block the sun. A little girl in a paint streaked t-shirt and ratty cloth shorts followed on her heels.
“Mrs. Ripley?” Max asked, taking a few steps toward the house and holding up his hands as if telling her, ‘please don’t shoot.’
She stood in the half open doorway, blocking her daughter, who rammed herself into her mother’s arm like a rabid animal who’d spotted a weakness in the bars of its cage.
She didn’t respond, instead shifting her gaze to the child. She forced the child, not unkindly, back into the house and pulled the heavier interior door shut.
“Yes, I’m Goldie Ripley,” she said, pausing at top of the porch stairs.
She wore brown overalls with a white tank top. Her feet were bare, and her short curly hair stuck up wildly as if she’d only recently woken up.
“I’m Max Wolfenstein. The kids call me Mr. Wolf. I teach at Winterberry Middle School.”
“Okay,” she said, as if preferring he get on with it.
“Have you heard from Vern?” he asked, abandoning his earlier plan to admit to the woman he didn’t really know Vern.
She raised her eyebrows.
“You seen him?” she asked.
He glanced at the window where the little girl had peeled back the curtain. She didn’t peek coyly at him, but rather stood with her face pressed to the glass. She held up a bag of potato chips and waved it as if it were a distress call. A large gray cat hopped onto the windowsill beside her, and she broke her gaze with Max to pet the cat instead.
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