Brave? He didn’t know how far that was from the truth.
“I’m working on a plan to keep you out of it. Safe,” I told them. The same thing I told Morgan in the letter I never sent.
“What should we do?” Skully asked.
“First of all, keep your mouth shut. You can’t let anyone find out. I mean anyone. Morgan already knows. The less people know, the better.”
“Deal,” she said.
“And when the cops show up?” Sebastian didn’t seem convinced. “What are we supposed to do?”
“Leave it to me,” I told them.
In the backseat, I watched the windows. As we sped closer to the Glades, we passed a shopping cart glinting in tall grass. Bird nests on telephone poles. A teddy bear strapped to a tree where somebody had crashed and died.
“Have you driven down here before?” I asked.
Skully nodded. “Lots of times.”
I put away the Sandman graphic novel that I found on the floor. I’d scanned the same page five times.
At last, we bumped along a dirt road. The Hummer barged through the sawgrass, parting it like the tide. The other cars drifted ahead: brake lights flashing along the path. A message in Morse Code: we’re in trouble.
Skully cut the engine.
“Now what?” I asked.
She took out a rhinestone-studded mirror and smeared lipstick around her smile. “We walk.”
I followed her through the sawgrass. The knife-sharp edges whipped against my pants. I locked onto Skully’s angel wings, which bobbed like a living thing strapped to her back. Every noise made me shudder, all the buzzing in the pines.
“What’s that sound? It’s freaking me out,” I said.
“Just frogs and cicadas,” said Sebastian, loping ahead with his plastic ninja sword.
“What about gators?” I asked, darting a glance into the canal.
“You’re looking at one. Those things are everywhere,” he said.
I squinted. A log came into focus. Not a log. A tail.
“Shit,” I said.
The gator sat so quiet and still, I wouldn’t have noticed until Sebastian pointed it out.
“Is it dead?” I asked.
Sebastian laughed. “Nope. He’s chillaxin.”
I stopped for a second and studied the gator’s eyes, which rose like a periscope in the mud-colored water. They closed ever so slowly, the lids thin as tissue paper.
“We used to see way more gators. But with last summer’s drought and everything, they’re basically drying up.”
“Yuck. They scare me,” Skully said. “I hope they become extinct.”
“He’s just doing his job,” I said softly, unable to look away.
“He or she,” Skully added.
“As long as you can run thirty miles per hour, you’re cool,” Sebastian said.
Skully picked up the pace. “Can we change the subject? Keep walking.”
“He probably thinks you’re a big bird.”
“La. La. La,” she sang. “I’m not listening.”
We caught up with the others, who had gathered in a circle close to the water’s edge. I kept waiting for someone to call me out. After reading all my hate mail online, I didn’t know what to expect.
I spotted Finch’s devil mask. He had an old-fashioned holster slung across his chest. I wondered if the gun was loaded.
Brent was there, too, pretending to be a pirate, saying things like “Thar she blows” or just snarling “Argh” every five seconds. Everybody laughed, as if this were actually funny. Of course, everything is a riot when you’re stoned. I walked closer to Brent.
“Are the girls here?” I asked him.
Brent flipped his eye patch from one side to the other. “You mean Skully? Oh, she doesn’t count as a girl.” He laughed.
Finch cut between us. “Looking for Morgan? Haven’t seen her yet.”
Just the sound of him drawling her name was enough to make me want to puke. How could she have ever hooked up with this tool? He offered me a beer, but I waved it away.
“Suit yourself,” he said, taking a swig.
Sebastian said, “Let me have a taste.”
Finch passed him the can.
I dug my fingers into my palms. I was going to destroy this guy, no matter how the night panned out.
Finch lead us to the airboat. He and Brent unloaded it off the trailer into the water. Once the airboat had splashed into the canal, we were good to go.
Only a few people could ride at one time. I let the others giggle and stumble aboard while I hung back with Skully and her brother. Where was Morgan? Was she ever going to show up?
A girl with a Mardi Gras mask approached me. “Hey,” she said, as if we were long lost buddies.
“Hey, yourself,” I said.
She squatted down on the grass. “So you’re Aaron, right?”
I cringed. “Who wants to know?”
“Danica.”
“Danica Stone?”
“The one and only.”
With her hair scraped back and her face hidden behind the mask, I didn’t recognize the chick. She had a nice body, packed into skinny jeans, and it was pretty obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra. No wonder the girls hated her.
Danica tugged off her mask. Up close, she was even hotter. Her skin was smooth and tan, and when she turned her face, specks of glitter caught the light across her cheekbones.
“Where’s your costume?” she asked.
“It’s a secret costume.”
“Can I see it?”
“Maybe later,” I said, as Skully pulled me away.
“Why are you talking to that skank?” she whispered.
“She seems nice.”
“That’s because you’re a boy.”
The airboat’s fan chugged to life, making a noise like a million hornets. All the girls nearby covered their ears and shrieked in fake fear.
“You ready for this?” Skully asked.
We looked at each other. The secret hung between us.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Good,” she said. “Because we’re next.”
25 : Island
The airboat wobbled as we climbed aboard. By this time, the sun had set. I could hardly see the trees, much less whatever was lurking in the water.
“Hang on guys. This is only the second time I’ve driven this thing,” Finch said, waving a flashlight as if we were at the planetarium.
“Liar,” Skully said.
He reached into a metal basket under the seat and pulled out a bag of cotton balls. “I never lie,” he said, tossing it at me. “Isn’t that true?”
I looked at the puddles of mud on the floor, then the cotton balls. “Are we making arts and crafts?”
“Stuff them in your ears. Unless you want to go deaf.”
The sun had dipped behind the pines, but there was enough light to see another gator stretched on the grass like a lawn ornament.
“Oh, my god,” Skully said. “It’s smiling at me.”
Finch grinned. “Red is their favorite color.”
Skully patted her Kool-Aid auburn hair and groaned.
I leaned back as the boat flew across the canal. We glided into the open water, swerving around clumps of tall grass and mile after mile of tangled lilies. I clung to the bench and kept watch for alligator eyes.
“Oh shit. Forgot to fill the gas tank,” Finch joked as the motor rumbled to a halt and we could hear again.
“Funny.” I pinched out the cotton balls and listened to the frogs barking in the weeds. No traffic noises, no planes. Just a spooky kind of quiet after the roar of the boat.
One at a time, we scrambled out of the boat onto a muddy
beach covered in footprints from the previous boatloads of kids. Hard to tell where the swamp ended and dry land began. Finch clamped a flashlight between his teeth and beckoned us into the woods.
Skully grabbed my hand. Her grip tightened as a flock of storks took to the sky, folding their wings like origami. “God, that scared the crap out of me.”
My cell phone rumbled in my pocket.
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
“Somebody sent a text,” I said, slipping it out halfway, trying to read the message. It was from the lead officer.
Are you ready?
“You’ve got service out here? Damn,” she said.
“It comes and goes.”
“Use it while you’ve got the chance. It’s only going to get worse.”
True.
I wiped the sweat off my forehead.
“Who was that, anyway?” she asked.
“A friend,” I said, hoping she caught my drift. “He wants to join us, but I’m not exactly sure where we’re at.”
“Me neither,” she said. “Just tell him we’re near the park entrance.”
“Yeah, but … how is he going to get here?”
I crammed the phone back in my pocket. I still couldn’t decide what to do. I dug out the quarter I’d been carrying ever since Sebastian passed it to me in the car. I tossed the coin and flipped it over. Tails.
“You never taught me that magic trick,” Skully said.
“I told you. There’s no magic to it. You just stick a coin in someone’s ear and pretend to pull it out.”
“That’s it?”
“Well, yeah. You just act like it was there all along.”
“And people fall for that,” she said. “Why?”
“They’ll believe anything, if they want it to be true.”
“Next you’ll tell me that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real,” she said, pouting.
I waited until she walked ahead, then I took out my cell and sent the magic words:
All the players are here.
I didn’t even need to relay the exact address. If 911 could track a location from a cell phone signal, so could the narcotics team. The lead officer would pass it to a select group of police. He said it could take them an hour to get briefed, assemble a team, and load the vehicles. They were waiting to crank up the “foot soldiers,” also known as “troops.”
Let the lead officer figure out the rest.
Skully turned around. “Double A? You coming?”
“Yeah,” I called back.
We made our way into a clearing. Somebody had built a bonfire, which must’ve been illegal on all sorts of levels. The others had crowded around it: Sebastian, guzzling another can of beer, and Brent, the designated DJ, messing with a boom box. It wasn’t so much a “party” as a “gathering.”
Finch had his arm around some girl. She was so small, he practically had to bend in half just to whisper in her ear. She looked like a junior high kid, clutching a beer, trying to look sexy in a cheerleading skirt. I did a double take and realized who it was.
Haylie.
What the hell was she doing with Finch? I was losing my cool.
“Haylie! Get over here,” I yelled, like I was her dad or something.
“What are you doing here?” She glared at me. “Whatever. Go away, Aaron. Leave me alone. Don’t act like you’re so perfect.”
God. Now my little sister hated me, too. She was my reason for all of this. And she didn’t even know it.
Finch dangled a blunt in front of my face and grinned mockingly. I took it and inhaled. Held the smoke as long as possible. Coughed my brains out.
Finch clapped me on the back. “How’s that blunt treating you?”
“I swear to god. If you so much as touch my sister—”
“You guys are gross.” Haylie wrinkled her nose. “I need to pee,” she said, heading for the bushes.
I tried to follow her, but soon as I was lost in a maze of straggly-looking pine trees. I stopped. That’s when I noticed Morgan, sitting above me on a branch. What was she doing here? She knew what was up.
Morgan wore a crown on her head and a long nightgown that flowed in the breeze. When she noticed me, a rush of guilt swept through my chest. I wanted to make things right, but it wasn’t going to happen.
I was thinking. That is, thinking about calling her name. If we were going to talk, it had to happen naturally. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind, when I realized that I hadn’t planned on talking at all. I was prepared to follow my usual course of action: ignoring her because it hurt too much to talk. But I couldn’t run away this time. Maybe I could give her a quick explanation before bolting. Even that sounded lame.
Morgan pushed back her hair, held in place by a sparkly crown, the kind a Disney princess would wear. It caught the light and sprayed diamonds across her forehead.
“I didn’t think you’d show,” I said, craning my neck to look at her. A stupid thing to say.
Morgan scowled. “Nice costume.”
“I’m not wearing one.”
“Not true.”
“Look. We’ve got to talk,” I said.
“Okay.” She still didn’t move.
“Um. This is kind of awkward.”
“I can’t hear you.” She extended her hand, as if she could pull me into the tree.
Back near the bonfire, a few people shouted at us. I ignored them and unlaced my sneakers. It was easier, climbing barefoot. I grabbed the lowest branch and hauled myself up, slipping a little as I got closer. The branches weren’t smooth. They were furry with moss. Once I found my balance, I swung myself over a limb and prayed I didn’t break my neck.
Skully called out from the edge of the party crowd, “Morgan and Aaron sitting in a tree … ”
“You’re a coward,” Morgan said.
“Don’t say that.”
“Isn’t it true?”
“What the fuck, Morgan? You have no idea what I’ve been through.”
“You?” she said. “Why don’t you go back to wherever you came from and stop fucking with my life?”
“I didn’t want this job. I got roped into it. Now I wish I never came here. But I’m also glad I did it. I got to see things in a different light, you know? Start over.”
“Yeah. By faking it.”
“Everybody is fake,” I said. “That’s what school is all about. If you don’t fake your way through it, you won’t survive.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” she said. “You ratted us out.”
“Then why did you come?”
“For them.” She peered back at the others. “They wouldn’t listen. They just think, ‘Oh, crazy Morgan. She had a fight with some boy.’ All those rumors, but they wouldn’t believe it was true when I told them.”
“Told them what?”
“That you’re a narc.”
I glanced at the fire, wishing I could be there, with the others, laughing. Not knowing what was coming. I watched Finch lift a branch from the flames and raise it high, like a torch. Through my tunnel vision I could see that the old-fashioned gun was still strapped to his belt.
“He’s not your friend, you know. He’s waiting to take you down,” Morgan said.
I refocused on her and pulled out my cell. “See this? It was given to me by the cops. Once I figured out that Finch was calling the shots, I could have bailed. But I didn’t.”
“Am I supposed to believe that? How can I believe anything you say?”
“I could call them right now.”
“You don’t even know where you are,” she said.
And she was right. “Fuck you. I’m so over this.”
I jumped down, landing on all fours. Pain zinged through my knees,
but I barely noticed it. There must have been something else cut into that blunt I smoked earlier. I stared at the tree, and it seemed to quiver.
“Shit.”
I tried to focus on the maze of branches. Anything to steady myself. But it wasn’t just my old glasses messing up my vision. Now the leaves were multiplying. I looked at Morgan, perched there, and it’s as if I knew what was cooking in her mind. I looked at the bonfire, the people in costumes huddled around it, and I knew their thoughts, too. I took out my cell again and pictured the radio waves lacing the air. The phone was poison. I chucked it, as far as possible, into the bushes. I grunted loudly as it crashed, and everyone stared.
“Have a good look,” I shouted. “Go on, you poseurs. All you fake-ass people. I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t you say it to my face?”
“Not here,” Finch said, stepping out from the group of people. “You wanna talk, little piggy? Let’s roll.” He stood and brushed the ashes off his jeans.
“Fine,” I told him. I had to do this, even if he beat the shit out of me. It was my chance to lead Finch away from the girls. Where the hell were the cops already?
Morgan screamed, “Don’t go,” but everything had dimmed to a blurry distance. I was floating high above it.
Her voice faded away. The fire shrank to a pinpoint. Finch marched ahead, snapping branches into my face. I kept walking, only looking at his back in front of me. When we finally reached a clearing, he stood near the water, as if considering a dip.
“I’m gonna speak real slow, cause I know that pigs have a hard time understanding plain English,” he said. “You got two choices. Run. Or swim.”
“Thought we were going to talk.”
“Why should I listen to a smartass narc who butts into other people’s business? I’m making some mad cash flow here, but I ain’t hurting nobody. Just give the rich bitches what they want. A little Mary J. A little Kryppie. If they don’t buy from me, they’ll score it somewhere else. At least I didn’t jack their trust, the way you did. Pretend to be tight with the homies.” He dragged out the word. “Did you get any play from it, man? Did Morgan put out? Or Skully? Or did you bang them both?”
I swung at his face with my now tingling arm, but Finch dodged it easily. My knees wobbled. The trees bent and spun. Then Finch slammed a roundhouse punch into my chest. I staggered back, wheezing. He knocked the wind out of me again. I sank to the ground. When I finally summoned the strength to lift my head, I saw Brent coming toward me with a stick.
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