“He’s from Lornea Island.”
“So?”
“So! He’s from Lornea Island, I’m from Lornea Island. That’s how I know him.”
“You’re not from Lornea Island.” James says.
“I go there. Every summer.” She turns to me. “Most summers.”
There’s a moment when no one speaks. And even though I’m sandwiched between the two most beautiful girls I’ve ever met, I’m kind of regretting coming.
“So why exactly is he here?” James presses on. The only good thing about the situation is that I don’t feel I have to reply, it’s obvious he’s talking to Lily, and her to him. It gives me a chance to study James a bit. As well as being mature, in a physical way, I can see he’s also very good looking. In the square-jawed kind of way.
“Calm down James. I told you, he’s funny. I saw him on TV last year, when he caught a gang of drug smugglers. He literally blew up their boat.”
This seems to take James by surprise. Lily keeps talking.
“I thought he could tell us about it. It’d be entertaining.” She changes her voice just a fraction, but I don’t know the significance.
“Alright,” James concedes gruffly. “Go on.”
Suddenly I feel everyone’s attention shift to me, but Eric steps in at once. “Woah there. Where’s our manners? First we have to offer the poor boy a drink, no?”
So then there’s a bit of a debate about what I’m going to drink, and for a moment I feel a tinge of disappointment. These people seem so different to my housemates, but now it seems like they’re just the same – only interested in drinking.
“Well, I’ve finished my classes for the day,” Eric announces. “So I’m going to celebrate with a frozen banana daquiri. Perhaps you’d like to join me?” Eric stands up, and I notice for the first time how he’s dressed. He’s wearing a suit and a silk waistcoat. There’s a chain coming out of it, so I think he might even have a pocket watch. But he smiles at me in a really friendly way, so I nod back.
“I’ll have one too,” Lily shouts at him, as he walks over to the counter, where he talks to the lady who’s serving as if they’re very old friends. Then he comes back and sits down. He kind of simpers, then looks at me very intently. “Frozen banana daquiris all round. They’ll be just a moment. Now Billy, you’re free to commence with your story.”
I don’t know exactly what to say, but I begin to recount the story of what happened last year, when I went to Australia with Dr Steve Rose, the famous marine biologist, to help monitor shark population off Wellington Island marine reserve, only I discovered that he’d been overstating the sizes of the sharks for several years, in order to make them sound more dangerous to the TV executives.
“Hold on,” Eric interrupts my flow at this point. “You’re talking about the Steve Rose – the TV guy, from Shark Bait!?”
“Yes, only he’s not doing Shark Bait anymore, because of what happened,” I say, then I get back to my story. “So I had to fly the drones – I have my own at home, so I’m very experienced at flying – and we used them for measuring the sharks…”
“Hang on, how does all this relate to the drugs thing? The thing Lily said?” This is Jennifer, she’s turned towards me, her hair hanging down like a shining black curtain. It distracts me a bit.
“Erm.” I take a slurp of the daquiri to refocus. They’ve arrived by this time, complete with those little paper umbrellas. Then I stare at it, wondering what it actually is. Whatever it is, it’s tasty.
“That came later. I have this friend, she’s called Amber…”
“Girlfriend?” Eric asks at once.
“No. Just a friend, but then she’d met this guy, this Italian guy who had sailed from Europe in a small yacht, and he’d met some guys somewhere in South America, and agreed to take some cocaine for them into the US. Only he got caught in a storm, and figured he could use it to pretend his boat had sunk, and make money selling the cocaine himself.”
I stop for another slurp of banana daquiri, and this time I notice how everyone is silent, just staring at me.
“So he’s hiding out, living on his boat in Holport, which is where I kept my boat, before it sank that is, and it turned out he had started seeing Amber when I was away and…”
“Hold up.” It’s Eric again. He raises his hand and acts like he’s trying to work this all out. “So your friend Amber is dating a guy who faked his own death ripping off South American drugs smugglers?”
“Erm. Yeah.”
“OK, carry on.”
“Well, there’s not much more to say. Somehow the smugglers found out Carlos wasn’t dead – that’s the Italian guy. And they found him, and they sent some guys to kill him and get the drugs back.”
I take another sip of my drink.
“Carlos is the guy who stole the drugs?” This time it’s James who asks.
“Yeah.”
“So what happened?”
I think back, remembering how I took my kayak out, and saw Amber and Carlos having sex on the floor of his boat. I won’t tell them that part.
“Well, they found Carlos and tortured him, but for some reason he told them I knew where the drugs were hidden.”
“And did you?” Jennifer asks. Her eyes are really sparkling now. I glance from her to Lily, and then back again. They’re both really beautiful, but actually there’s no doubt which of them is more beautiful. It’s Lily. There’s something about her that just takes my breath away.
“Billy?”
“Huh?”
“Did you know?”
“Oh. No. Well not at first, but then I worked it out, because I actually saw Carlos when he was hiding the drugs. In a sea cave.” I turn to Lily. “You know those caves down the west side of Lornea Island, in the marine reserve? I thought it was odd he was spear fishing there.”
Lily’s sets her face into a frown. “OK.”
Eric sits back suddenly and his head gives a kind of shiver, like he can’t keep up any more, but I press on. I’m almost there now.
“So I worked out where the cocaine is. But then the gangsters – I suppose that’s what they are – they kidnapped Amber’s sister, and told us they’d kill her if we didn’t get their drugs back, it was worth millions, apparently.”
James scratches his chin. “Then what?”
“Well then me and Steve went out to dive and get the drugs, and we managed to shoot the gangsters. Then we crashed my boat into their boat, and then the police turned up.”
I sit back and wait.
“I told you he was funny,” Lily says, and she looks at me, delight lighting up her beautiful face.
Chapter Eleven
“Wow.” Eric says a few moments later. “Just wow Billy.” He reaches up and clicks his fingers, then when the lady behind the counter looks over, he orders me another banana daquiri, even though I haven’t finished the first one yet. And then they all start asking me questions, clarifying exactly what happened. I have to admit, it’s fun to talk about now, even though at the time it wasn’t fun to actually do. It’s odd too, since I kind of expected that I’d have to explain all of this to the people in my house – after being on TV and everything – but none of them ever asked.
And the café where we’re sitting has a real comfy feel, which I hadn’t realized I’d missed, but now I think I have. My apartment (I still don’t think of it as home) was sparse and bare when I moved in, and now it’s filled with trash – I mean literally filled with trash, we’ve all got into a bit of a standoff over who should take it out, and as a result no one will. The trash can itself, a small plastic container which was in a corner by the microwave, filled up weeks ago and has been overtopped, like a river in flood. It’s now buried beneath empty pizza boxes, beer cans and wine bottles in what Guy and Jimbo call the Trash Corner. They claim it’s an improvement, since you can simply toss trash in the general direction and be sure to hit. And there’s no need to take it outside. Obviously their thinking is flawed here. My room is rea
sonably tidy, but it’s very small, and there’s only one chair, by the desk, so you can’t really relax there. But this place – I look around – the sofas are all different, and all well used, but not in a worn-out way, more like they’ve taken years to bed-in, and now they’re just right. I’m surprised, and a bit disappointed when James suddenly pulls out his cell phone, checks it, and announces it’s time to go. I think at first he means just him, but all the rest of them start getting up to leave as well.
“Where are you going?” I ask, which is a bit forward of me, but just goes to show how relaxed I feel now, and how much I was enjoying myself.
“We have work to do Billy.” James smiles at me, and it occurs to me it’s the first time he actually smiled at me the whole time I was here. It’s not the nicest smile either, he looks a bit sarcastic. The others get up, and they start leaving, and I panic for a moment that I’m going to be left with the check. I don’t mind paying for what I drank, but ten Banana Daquiris must be expensive. But then I see Eric going to the bar. I expect him to pull out his wallet, or something, but instead he embraces the lady behind the desk, and kisses her on both cheeks. She does the same to him, like this is normal behavior. Then I guess he catches me looking, because he comes over to me and whispers in my ear.
“Don’t worry dear boy, it’s all on the slate.” Then he touches my shoulder, gives me a look and says out loud. “I trust we’ll see you again soon, Billy?” and then he looks at Lily, who looks at James, who says nothing, but turns and walks away and out of the café. The others follow him, except Lily, so that now it’s just the two of us. She doesn’t say anything, like she’s considering what to do next.
“Why don’t you come to dinner?” She says in the end, which I definitely wasn’t expecting.
I’ve no idea if she means just the two of us, or everyone.
“OK.” I say, after a moment.
“Good.” She looks pleased with this, and she takes a pen and scrap of paper from the table and writes down a number.
“Text me yours. I’ll set something up.” When she hands it to me our hands touch a second time, and this time I savor how smooth her skin is. But it’s her eyes I remember most, the way they sparkle when she looks up and says:
“See ya Billy.”
I text her before I even leave the café, but she doesn’t reply at once. In fact it’s two days before anyone texts me again, so I start to worry if my cell phone might be broken. But then it chirps at me, a couple of days later. I’m actually still in bed, since it’s Saturday, and I don’t have any lectures. I have the phone charging on my desk, so I have to get up quickly to grab it, but then I see it’s not from Lily. It’s from Amber.
Hi Billy, I was a bit distant the other week. Super busy. Let’s go out with your friends. I wanna meet Guy again!
I read it, and though I’m disappointed it’s not from Lily, it also kind of makes me smile, and then a second text comes in.
It’s Saturday night. You must have some party planned?
And then there’s a loud banging on my door.
“Yo Billy, get your ass out here.”
I don’t know who it is, and then the voice gets harder to identify because loud music suddenly fires up from the kitchen. Whoever it is bangs on the door again, and then they shout again. I identify it as Jimbo this time.
“Get up you lazy piece of shit.” We’ve all got to know each other a bit better now, this is just how he talks to his friends.
“What is it?” I reply.
“We’re tidying.” Jimbo says. “Get up.”
“Tidying?”
“Just get your ass out here.”
I consider ignoring him, since it isn’t my mess, but I decide I better help, so I get dressed and come into the kitchen. Here I find that everyone else from the house is there and actually tackling the disaster of our communal living quarters. Jimbo is wearing pink washing up gloves and soaping up all our plates and cups and dishes – we ran out of clean ones weeks ago, but they never got washed. Claire is there drying up and putting them away, while Sarah and Laura are delicately picking up items from the mountain of trash and dropping them into black bags. Guy is sweeping, sort of, behind the row of chairs.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re having a clean-up. We’re gonna start a rota.” Jimbo tells me from the sink.
“I thought you liked the mess? What changed?”
No one answers for a second, then Laura does.
“I saw a rat.” she explains, wrinkling her nose.
“Where?” My eyes turn to the Trash Mountain. “What? An actual rat?”
“I think so.” She gives a shudder. I feel Guy come to my shoulder, and the four of us regard the pile of trash as if it might conceal terrifying monsters.
“I’m not 100% sure it was a rat,” she goes on. “I was a bit stoned, at the time. But it was definitely something. And that is disgusting.”
“And it’s not good for bringing pussy home,” Guy adds, causing Laura to shove him back to his sweeping.
“You want to help fill this up, Billy?” Sarah says, holding out her bag.
“Course he’s going to fucking help,” Jimbo shouts from the sink. “If he thinks he can get out of it he can fuck off.” Which is rude of him, because of course I’m going to help.
“I can get my computer,” I suggest. “I’m very good at spreadsheets. I could make the rota.”
“Oh no you don’t you lazy piece of shit. Grab a fucking bag.”
So I do, and strangely enough it’s actually the nicest Saturday I’ve had with the other guys in the house. Me and Laura and Sarah fill six bags of trash before we see the top of the actual trash can again, and then we slow down a bit, just in case Laura really did see a rat, although I’m doubting it would still be there, if she ever did see it in the first place. And at the same time, we get talking, about what they’re studying, and how they’re finding it. And it’s funny, but now that I’ve met Lily and Jennifer, it’s kind of made me more relaxed around my housemates – they seem… ordinary, but not exactly in a bad way. Laura has her hair tied back, and her skin is kind of blotchy. And Sarah still looks quite pretty – almost like a less glamorous version of Jennifer, Lily’s friend. But nowhere near as stunning as Lily, so it makes her easy to talk to.
Laura picks up a plastic bag by its corner and tugs it loose from the now much smaller trash mountain. It comes free and drips trash-juice on the floor.
“Urgh, get it in the bag.” I step forward and stretch open the black bag I’m holding, and we get it in. As we do so there’s a rustling from the bottom of the pile.
“I saw something!” Sarah says, and we all stare, tense.
“It was just the pile settling back down,” I say. I’m still sure we’re not actually about to reveal a rat, that would be disgusting. But then Guy comes over with his broom. He turns it around and pokes the handle into the pile, hooking it under the partially broken-down remains of a trash bag. I remember setting it up, next to the can, after it overfilled. He lifts it, and we see a section of the floor we’ve not seen for a while, stained yellow. And then we see it. First a flash of brown fur, and then the scaly skin of rodent tail, disappearing deeper into what remains of the pile. Guy lifts some more.
“Oh my God!” Laura exclaims, and Guy screams too, as a dozen little pink bodies twitch in the sudden light. It’s not a single rat, it’s an actual nest of them.
Chapter Twelve
It was me that had to deal with the nest in the end. No one else would go near it. I used an old cardboard beer box – the kind that carries twelve large cans – and cut down two sides to make a kind of scoop, with a fold-down lid. Then I put gloves on, cleared away the few bits of trash still covering it up, and slid the box gently under the nest. You could hear the little babies squeaking and chirping, but only just because Laura and Claire were squealing three times as loud. Sarah helped me close the box, and wrap tape around it to seal it. Then we carefully cleared up the rest of th
e trash, expecting to see the adult rats any moment, but they weren’t there. We found a little gap in the skirting, so I guess they escaped under the floor that way. I blocked the hole up so they couldn’t come back. We weren’t sure what to do with the nest though. Jimbo and Guy wanted to dump it down the drain, but Laura wouldn’t let them, and my suggestion to find a safe place somewhere in the wild was good in theory, but not much help in the middle of a city. In the end, Sarah and I carried it together to a park, while the others watched out that no one saw what we were doing. We slid it under some bushes and built up a little protective bank of sticks and leaves. I don’t suppose they’ll survive, but at least they have a chance.
And maybe you’d think, after all that, and spending the rest of the day finally getting the kitchen looking almost as clean as when we moved in, we might want to cook something in it, but maybe we were all a bit wary, hygienically speaking, and anyway, none of us had any food in. So instead we agreed to go out, together, for a proper meal out. I guess we were all feeling that we’d actually bonded a bit. And somewhere along the line I remembered the text from Amber, and I asked if it was OK for her to come along. The moment I mentioned her, Guy was all over the idea, and even though Laura looked a bit dubious for a second or two – because (in case you haven’t guessed) she’s obviously trying to get together with Jimbo, and doesn’t want the competition, she obviously sensed the mood too, and didn’t want to spoil it. So I text Amber and tell her to come as well.
After that it’s really hard to get anywhere near the bathroom, since the girls are in there getting ready. Actually, the girls and Guy, who’s just as bad. Jimbo sits in the lounge and drinks beer and watches sports on TV. It’s hooked up to the internet, so he’s able to get this really obscure hockey channel, and he tries to explain to me what the attraction is, although I have to admit he fails.
The Island of Dragons (Rockpools Book 4) Page 6