Teardrop (Teardrop Trilogy 1)

by Lauren Kate

  “He smiled!” Cat said. “Should I catch up? I don’t think I can run in this dress.”

  “Cat, we came here to look for Ander, remember?”

  “Right. Ander. Supertall. Skinny—not too skinny. Delightful blond curls. Ander.”

  They stopped at the edge of the track. Even though Eureka had already run six miles that afternoon, when the toe of her shoe touched the pebbly red gravel, she got the urge to sprint.

  They watched the team. Boys and girls staggered around the track, running at different speeds. All of them wore the same white polo shirt with the dark yellow collar and yellow running shorts.

  “That ain’t him,” Cat said, her pointer finger following the runners. “And that ain’t him—cute, but not him. And that guy certainly ain’t him.” She frowned. “It’s weird. I can picture the aura he projects, but it’s hard to remember his face clearly. Maybe I just didn’t see him up close?”

  “He’s unusual-looking,” Eureka said. “Not in a bad way. Striking.”

  His eyes are like the ocean, she wanted to say. His lips are coral-colored. His skin holds the kind of power that makes a compass needle jump.

  She didn’t see him anywhere.

  “There’s Jack.” Cat pointed at a dark-haired beanpole with muscles who’d stopped to stretch on the side of the track. “He’s the captain. Remember when I played Seven Minutes in Heaven with him last winter? Want me to ask him?”

  Eureka nodded, following Cat’s saunter toward the boy.

  “Say, Jack.” Cat slid onto the bleacher above the one Jack’s outstretched leg was using. “We’re looking for a guy on your team named Ander. What’s his last name, Reka?”

  Eureka shrugged.

  So did Jack. “No Anders on this team.”

  Cat kicked her legs out, crossed her ankles. “Look, we had that rained-out meet against you guys two days ago, and he was there. Tall lad, blond—help me out, Reka?”

  Ocean eyes, she almost blurted out. Hands that could catch a falling star.

  “Kinda pale?” she managed to say.

  “Kinda not on the team.” Jack retied his running shoe and straightened up, signaling he was done.

  “You’re kinda a crap captain if you don’t know your teammates’ names,” Cat called as he walked away.

  “Please,” Eureka said with an earnestness that made Jack stop and turn around. “We really need to find him.”

  The boy sighed. He walked back toward the girls, grabbed a black shoulder bag from under the bleachers. He pulled out an iPad, swiped it a few times. When he handed it to Eureka the screen displayed an image of the cross-country team posing on the bleachers. “Yearbook pictures were last week. This is everyone on the team. See your Xander here?”

  Eureka pored over the photograph, looking for the boy she’d just seen in the parking lot, the one who’d hit her car, the one she couldn’t get out of her mind. Thirty young and hopeful boys smiled out at her, but none of them was Ander.

  10

  WATER AND POWER

  Eureka squeezed a dab of coconut sunblock into her palm and slathered a second coat onto William’s white shoulders. It was a warm, sunny Saturday morning, so Brooks had driven Eureka and the twins down to his family’s camp on Cypremort Point at the edge of Vermilion Bay.

  Everyone who lived along the southern stretch of Bayou Teche wanted a spot at the Point. If your family didn’t have a camp along the two-mile corridor of the peninsula near the marina, you made a friend whose family did. Camps were weekend homes, mostly an excuse to have a boat, and they ranged from little more than a trailer parked on a grassy lot to million-dollar mansions raised on cedar stilts, with private slips for boats. Hurricanes were commemorated by black paint markers on the camps’ front doors, denoting each point to which the water rose—Katrina ’05, Rita ’05, Ike ’08.

  The Brookses’ camp was a four-bedroom clapboard with a corrugated aluminum roof and petunias potted in faded Folgers cans lining the windowsills. It had a cedar dock out back that looked endless in the afternoon sun. Eureka had known a hundred happy hours out there, eating pecan pralines with Brooks, holding a sugarcane fishing pole, its line painted green with algae.

  The plan that day had been to fish for lunch, then pick up some oysters at the Bay View, the only restaurant in town. But the twins were bored with fishing as soon as the worms vanished beneath the murky water, so they’d all ditched their rods and driven up to the narrow stretch of beach looking out on the bay. Some people said the artificial beach was ugly, but when the sunlight glittered on the water, and the golden cordgrass rippled in the wind, and the seagulls cawed as they dipped low to fish, Eureka couldn’t imagine why. She slapped a mosquito off her leg and watched the black stillness of the bay at the edge of the horizon.

  It was her first time near a big body of water since Diana’s death. But, Eureka reminded herself, this was her childhood; there was no reason to be nervous.

  William was erecting a sand McMansion, his lips pursed in concentration, while Claire demolished his progress wing by wing. Eureka hovered over them with the bottle of Hawaiian Tropic, studying their shoulders for the slightest blush of pink.

  “You’re next, Claire.” Her fingers rubbed lotion along the border of William’s inflatable orange water wings.

  “Uh-uh.” Claire rose to her feet, knees caked with wet sand. She eyed the sunscreen and started to run away, but she tripped over the sand McMansion’s pool.

  “Hurricane Claire strikes again.” Brooks hopped up to chase her.

  When he came back with Claire in his arms, Eureka went at her with the sunscreen. She writhed, shrieking when Brooks tickled her.

  “There.” Eureka snapped the lid back on the bottle. “You’re protected for another hour.”

  The kids ran off, sand architecture abandoned, to look for nonexistent seashells at the water’s edge. Eureka and Brooks flopped back on the blanket, pushed their toes down into cool sand. Brooks was one of the few people who remembered to always sit on her right side so she could hear him when he talked.

  The beach was uncrowded for a Saturday. A family with four young kids sat to the left, everyone angling for shade beneath a blue tarp pitched across two poles. Scattered fishermen roved the shore, their lines slicing into the sand before the water washed them clean. Farther down, a group of middle school kids Eureka recognized from church threw ropes of seaweed at each other. She watched the water lap against the twins’ ankles, reminding herself that four miles out, Marsh Island kept the larger Gulf waves at bay.

  Brooks passed her a dewy can of Coke from the picnic basket. For a guy, Brooks was strangely good at picnic packing. There was always a variety of junk and healthy food: chips and cookies and apples, turkey sandwiches and cold drinks. Eureka’s mouth watered at the sight of a Tupperware of some of his mom Aileen’s leftover spicy shrimp étouffée over dirty rice. She took a swig of the soda, leaned back on her elbows, resting the cold can between her bare knees. A sailboat cruised east in the distance, its sails blurring into the low clouds on the water.

  “I should take you sailing soon,” Brooks said, “before the weather changes.” Brooks was a great sailor—unlike Eureka, who could never remember which way to crank the levers. This was the first summer he’d been allowed to take friends out on the boat alone. She’d sailed with him once in May and had planned to do it every weekend after that, but then the accident happened. She was working her way back to being around water. She had these nightmares where she was sinking in the middle of the darkest, wildest ocean, thousands of miles from any land.

  “Maybe next weekend?” Brooks said.

  She couldn’t avoid the ocean forever. It was as much a part of her as running.

  “Next time, we can leave the twins at home,” she said.

  She felt bad about bringing them. Brooks had already gone far out of his way, driving twenty miles north to pick up Eureka in Lafayette, since her car was still in the shop. When he got to her house, guess who begged and pleaded
and pitched small fits to come along? Brooks couldn’t say no to them. Dad said it was okay and Rhoda was at some meeting. So Eureka spent the next half hour moving car seats from Dad’s Continental into the backseat of Brooks’s sedan, struggling with twenty different buckles and infuriating straps. Then there were the beach bags, the floaties that needed blowing up, and the snorkel gear William insisted on retrieving from the farthest recesses of the attic. Eureka imagined there were no such obstacles when Brooks spent time with Maya Cayce. She imagined Eiffel Towers and candlelit tables set with platters of poached lobster springing up in fields of thornless red roses whenever Brooks hung out with Maya Cayce.

  “Why should they stay home?” Brooks laughed, watching Claire fashion a seaweed mustache on William. “They’d love it. I’ve got kiddie life jackets.”

  “Because. They’re exhausting.”

  Brooks reached into the basket for the étouffée. He took a forkful, then passed Eureka the tub. “You’d be more exhausted by guilt if you didn’t bring them.”

  Eureka lay back on the sand and put her straw hat over her face. He was annoyingly right. If Eureka ever let herself add up how exhausted by guilt she already was, she’d probably be bedridden. She felt guilty for how distant she’d grown with Dad, for the unending wave of panic she’d unleashed on the household by swallowing those pills, for the smashed Jeep Rhoda insisted on paying to fix so that she could hold the expense over Eureka’s head.

  She thought of Ander and felt more guilt at being gullible enough to believe he’d take care of her car. Yesterday afternoon, Eureka had finally worked up the courage to dial the number he’d slipped inside her wallet. A thick-voiced woman named Destiny picked up and told Eureka she’d just hooked up her phone service the day before.

  Why drive to her house just to give her a fake number? Why lie about being on Manor’s cross-country team? How had he found her at the lawyer’s office—and why had he driven away so suddenly?

  Why did the possibility of never seeing him again fill Eureka with panic?

  A sane person would realize Ander was a creep. That was Cat’s conclusion. For all the nonsense Cat put up with from her various boys and men, she didn’t tolerate a liar.

  Okay, he’d lied. Yes. But Eureka wanted to know why.

  Brooks lifted a corner of the straw hat to peek at her face. He’d rolled over onto his stomach next to her. He had sand on the side of his tanned cheek. She could smell the sun on his skin.

  “What’s on my favorite mind?” he asked.

  She thought about how trapped she’d felt when Ander had grabbed Brooks by the collar. She thought about how quick Brooks had been to make fun of Ander afterward. “You don’t want to know.”

  “That’s why I asked,” Brooks said. “Because I do not want to know.”

  She didn’t want to tell Brooks about Ander—and not just because of the hostility between them. Eureka’s secrecy had to do with her, with how intensely Ander made her feel. Brooks was one of her best friends, but he didn’t know this side of her. She didn’t know this side of her. It wouldn’t go away.

  “Eureka.” Brooks tapped a thumb on her lower lip. “What’s up?”

  She touched the center of her chest, where her mother’s triangular lapis locket rested. In two days she’d gotten used to its weight around her neck. Brooks reached out and met her fingers on the locket’s face. He held the locket up and thumbed the clasp.

  “It doesn’t open.” She tugged it free, not wanting him to break it.

  “Sorry.” He flinched, then rolled away onto his back. Eureka eyed the line of muscles on his stomach.

  “No, I’m sorry.” She licked her lips. They tasted salty. “It’s just delicate.”

  “You still haven’t told me how it went at the lawyer’s,” Brooks said. But he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring up at the sky, where a gray cloud filtered the sun.

  “You want to know if I’m a billionaire?” Eureka asked. Her inheritance had left her bewildered and sad, but it was an easier subject than Ander. “Honestly, I’m not quite sure what Diana left me.”

  Brooks tugged at some beach grass poking up through the sand. “What do you mean? It looks like a broken locket.”

  “She also left me a book in a language no one can read. She left me something called a thunderstone—some ball of archaeological gauze I’m not supposed to unwrap. She wrote a letter that says these things matter. But I’m not an archaeologist; I’m just her daughter. I have no idea what to do with them, and it makes me feel stupid.”

  Brooks pivoted on the blanket so that his knees brushed Eureka’s side. “We’re talking about Diana. She loved you. If the heirlooms have a purpose, it’s certainly not to make you feel bad.”

  William and Claire had visited the tarp down the shore and found a couple of kids to splash around with. Eureka was grateful for a few moments alone with Brooks. She hadn’t realized how burdened her inheritance had made her feel, how much of a relief it would be to share the burden. She looked out at the bay and pictured her heirlooms flying away like pelicans, not needing her anymore.

  “I wish she’d told me about these things while she was alive,” she said. “I didn’t think we had secrets.”

  “Your mom was one of the smartest people who ever lived. If she left you a ball of gauze, maybe it’s worth investigating. Think of it as an adventure. That’s what she would do.” He tossed his drained soda can into the picnic basket and took off his straw fedora. “I’m gonna take a dip.”

  “Brooks?” She sat up and reached for his hand. When he turned to face her, his hair flopped down over his eyes. She reached to brush it aside. The wound on his forehead was healing; there was just a thin, round scab above his eyes. “Thanks.”

  He smiled and stood up, straightening his blue bathing suit, which looked good against his tan skin. “No sweat, Cuttlefish.”

  As Brooks walked to the water, Eureka eyed the twins and their new friends. “I’ll wave at you from the breakers,” she called to Brooks, like she always did.

  There was a legend about a bayou boy who’d drowned in Vermilion Bay on a late summer afternoon, just before sunset. One minute, he was racing with his brothers, sloshing in the shallow far reaches of the bay; the next—maybe on a dare—he swam past the breakers and was swept out to sea. Accordingly, Eureka had never dared to swim near the red-and-white-buoyed breakers as a kid. Now she knew the story was a lie told by parents to keep their kids scared and safe. Vermilion Bay waves barely qualified as waves. Marsh Island fought the real ones off, like a superhero guarding his home metropolis.

  “We’re hungry!” Claire shouted, shaking sand from her short blond ponytail.

  “Congratulations,” Eureka said. “Your prize is a picnic.” She swung open the basket’s lid and spread out its wares for the kids, who raced over to see what was there.

  She popped straws into juice boxes, opened several bags of chips, and pulled all evidence of tomato from William’s turkey sandwich. She hadn’t thought about Ander in a good five minutes.

  “How’s the grub?” She chomped a chip.

  The twins nodded, mouths full.

  “Where’s Brooks?” Claire asked between the bites she was taking from William’s sandwich, even though she had her own.

  “Swimming.” Eureka scanned the water. Her eyes were bleary from the sun. She’d said she’d wave to him; he must have been at the breakers by them. The buoys were only a hundred yards from shore.

  There weren’t many people swimming, just the middle school boys laughing at the futility of their boogie boards on her right. She’d seen Brooks’s dark curls bob above water and the long stroke of his tanned arm about halfway to the breakers—but that had been a while ago. She cupped a hand over her eyes to block the sun. She watched the line dividing water from sky. Where was he?

  Eureka rose to her feet for a better view of the horizon. There was no lifeguard on this beach, no one keeping watch on distant swimmers. She imagined she could see forever—past Vermili
on, south to Weeks Bay, to Marsh Island and beyond to the Gulf, to Veracruz, Mexico, to ice caps near the South Pole. The farther she saw, the darker the world became. Every boat was tattered and abandoned. Sharks and snakes and alligators laced through the waves. And Brooks was out there, swimming freestyle, far away.

  There was no reason to panic. He was a strong swimmer. Yet she was panicking. She swallowed hard as her chest tightened, closed.

  “Eureka.” William fit his hand in hers. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Her voice wobbled. She had to calm down. Nerves were distorting her perception. The water looked choppier than it had before. A gale of wind rushed at her, carrying a deep, murky odor of humus and beached gars. The gust flattened Eureka’s black caftan across her body and sent the twins’ chips scattering across the sand. The sky rumbled. A greenish cloud rolled in from nowhere and snickered from behind the thick banana trees at the western curve of the bay. The dense, queasy sensation of something bad brewing spread through her stomach.

  Then she saw the whitecap.

  The wave skimmed the water’s surface, building on itself half a mile past the breakers. It rolled toward them in textured whorls. Eureka’s palms began to sweat. She couldn’t move. The wave pulled closer toward the shore as if attracted by a powerful magnetic force. It was ugly and ragged, tall and then taller. It swelled to twenty feet, matching the height of the cedar stilts holding up the row of houses on the south side of the bay. Like an uncoiling rope it lashed toward the peninsula of camps, then seemed to change course. At the wave’s highest point, the frothy coat angled a pointer toward the center of the beach—toward Eureka and the twins.

  The wall of water advanced, deep with myriads of blue. It blazed with diamonds of sun-cut light. Small islands of flotsam roiled across its surface. Vast eddies swirled, as if the wave were trying to devour itself. It stank of rotting fish and—she breathed in—citronella candles?

  No, it didn’t smell like citronella candles. Eureka took another whiff. But the scent was in her mind for some reason, as if she’d conjured it from a memory of another wave, and she didn’t know what that meant.