“I know, I know…discretion.” I circled my fingers in the sand to mirror Poe’s hands on my skin. I sneaked a peek at him over my shoulder and found his eyes glued to the ink. “Don’t tell me, that kind of devotion to the society gets you all hot and bothered.”
He lifted his gaze to mine and smiled in affirmation. The moment had kiss written all over it. But the rest of the club was only a few yards away.
“Let’s go have that lesson now,” he whispered, and I shivered, despite the warm Florida sun.
“And put up with the same grief as Jenny and Harun?” I asked.
“I’ll go one way, you go another, and we’ll meet up,” Poe said.
I ratified the plan and watched as he packed up and headed back to the compound. For appearances’ sake, I took the slightly longer route past the girls’ cabin. As long as I was planning a rendezvous, I might as well pause for a quick application of lip gloss. But when I reached the cabin, I found Darren Gehry standing at the door.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He ducked his head, ashamed to have been caught. “I just wanted to—”
“What?” I strode up to him. “You wanted to what? Break in?” Hadn’t we had enough of that already?
“No!” he said, looking hurt. “God, no. I just wanted to see what had happened. Everyone’s been talking about the damage. I just wanted to see it. Jesus.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked past me.
“Oh, well.” I frowned. “Come on, let me show you.” I leaned past him and undid the brand-new combination lock Salt had installed on our door. Thankfully, the code was something other than 312. Salt’s devotion to all things Rose & Grave clearly couldn’t overcome the fact that Master Locks come pre-programmed.
Darren followed me inside and took in the dingy surroundings. “Wow, you guys must have cleaned a lot of this up.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, don’t kill me for saying so, but it’s not nearly as bad as what I’d been hearing.” He traced a line of paint on the wall. “You washed off the swear words, at least.”
Swear words. How cute.
“Which one is Odile’s?” he asked.
I smiled. Someone here had a cru-ush. “The one where the blankets aren’t covered in paint,” I said, gesturing to the freshly made-up bunk.
He looked at her luggage, her pillow (I resisted pointing out that she’d never actually slept on it) and the traveling clothes she’d tossed on the bed.
“Were you expecting something special?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Something other than a Samsonite roll-aboard?”
He shrugged. “Am I being a big dork?”
“No,” I said. “Just normal. I bet I’d be a mess if I met some of the politicians who come to your family’s Christmas parties.”
“That’s different.”
Yeah. Condoleezza Rice hadn’t yet appeared in lingerie in Maxim.
Clarissa materialized at the door, and clutched a hand to her chest. “Oh, Amy! It’s you. You surprised me.” She glanced over at Darren. “Hi.”
He waved back. “Thanks for showing me around,” he said to me, and brushed past her and out into the sunlight.
Clarissa came inside. “That poor kid,” she said. “I mean, I’ll never forgive him for ruining my top, but I suppose in the scheme of things…” she waved halfheartedly at her destroyed bag, “it could have been worse.” She took in the sight of me applying lip gloss and still scented heavily with lotion. “Are you done with the beach?”
“I was thinking of—”
“Can I talk to you?”
I looked at her. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I really examined Clarissa. Her hair had split ends. Her manicure was chipped. She’d actually put on a couple of pounds (though I thought it looked fabulous on her). Clearly, Clarissa’s Spring Break had been no more relaxing than mine, and she seemed to need a vacation even more than I did. I recalled her short temper since we’d arrived. “Sure,” I said. I’d deal with Poe when he showed up.
We sat on the porch and Clarissa clasped her hands in her lap. “I haven’t told anyone,” she said. “Felicity…I couldn’t. I mean, we’re friends and all, but it’s like we’re rivals, too. Always trying to one-up each other. With grades, with toys, with men…” She glanced at me. “Until Brandon of course. I think she really does love him.”
“I know she does,” I said flatly. Ixnay on the Andonbray, huh?
“I’m sorry.”
I waved her off. “It’s fine. I don’t want to talk about it. What’s going on with you?”
She was silent for several long moments. “I don’t know what I’m going to do next year.”
My brow furrowed. “I thought you were going to work for McKinsey?”
“I lied.” She buried her face in her hands. “I couldn’t really tell anyone. But I didn’t get offers from any of the places I applied.”
“Oh, honey,” I said, and threw an arm around her. “It’s only March.” And heck, I didn’t know what I was doing, either. Who was I to comfort her?
“No,” she said. “I’m not going to get a job. It’s like college applications all over again.” I felt her shake underneath my arm. “Except this time, I don’t have my daddy to bail me out.” She expelled a pent-up breath. “God, I’m such a spoiled brat. I’ve been sailing by all these years, convinced that I’d proven myself. But it’s starting all over again. And I don’t even know if I want to be a consultant. But that’s what you do, you know?”
No, I didn’t know. “I’m not going to—”
“Amy, what am I going to do? I need to find a job.” She looked up, her eyes red. “I can’t spend the rest of my life living off my family. Just looking at Malcolm earlier—I envy him so much. He gave his family the finger, went off, did his own thing. And he made it work.”
“He’s working on a fishing boat,” I pointed out. I could hardly envision Clarissa with a chum bucket.
“He’s going to grad school!” she cried.
“You could go to grad school,” I said.
“And do what?” she said. “I can’t let it be an excuse, like everyone else does. A reason to put off the future for a few more years.”
I dropped my hand to my side. Was that what my applications were all about? Putting off the future? After all, it wasn’t like I saw myself in academia on a permanent basis. I wasn’t interested in becoming a professor.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She swallowed. “I shouldn’t have said a lot of the things I’ve been going on about. It’s just—you were right. I’m jealous. Jenny was such a mess last semester, and now she’s got it all together. Happy, and starting her little company, and in love—no, I don’t care what anyone else says, there is something going on with them. And you know what? I don’t really care. It’s just that I think about the things my dad said about us, about how we’d turn into a singles club or a soap opera, and I wonder…maybe he was right? And if he was right, then why did we bother fighting the patriarchs? If we hadn’t fought, maybe I wouldn’t be…” She trailed off, looked out into the woods.
I followed her gaze and saw Poe standing there, watching us. I waved at him and he waved back, then melted into the trees.
“And everyone keeps slamming Kadie,” she went on. “Like she’s this total worthless witch, and Demetria keeps acting like I’m just like her—”
“That’s not true!” I said. “You’re not like Kadie in any of the bad ways. Demetria’s just a little brash when she gets upset.”
“And I think, is that all I’m cut out for? Like Kadie? Just be a vicious, backstabbing, little society wife, and forget that I’ve got an Eli diploma in my closet? Like maybe that’s my unavoidable fate? Or just easy enough that there’s no point fighting it?”
And much as I hated to admit it, some of that rang true. This is the problem with being both really smart and a little screwed up. You’re able to concoct the most believable self-defeating positi
ons.
“No,” Clarissa said, as if coming to a decision. “I don’t mean that. I just can’t help it—my dad’s voice echoing in my head all the time. I don’t want to be that person. But I’m not sure I’ve figured out an alternative. And I hate all you people who have.”
I sighed. Well, I hadn’t. “We’re not what your dad predicted we’d be, Clarissa.”
“No?” she said. “I am. I’m treating the girls here like I do my friends everywhere else. I’m jealous and competitive and awful.”
“You’re not awful,” I said, recalling how, even a year ago, I thought the exact opposite. “You’re ambitious—even if you don’t know what for—and that comes with a strong sense of competition. It doesn’t make you evil to think bad things about your friends from time to time.” At least, I hoped it didn’t, or someone should fit me for a black hat and a twirly mustache. I was regularly jealous of Lydia, and vice versa. But we loved each other, and we stood by each other when it counted.
“My dad didn’t do that. Not with the Diggers.”
“That’s crap,” I said. “Diggers are the same as everyone else. You don’t think they stab one another in the back? You don’t think they choose other concerns over this society? Kurt Gehry screwed P—Jamie over when he didn’t agree with him. The President tossed Gehry to the wolves last month. No matter what our oaths are, we’re not always going to be friends with someone just because they’re Diggers. And it’s not just this year, not just the addition of women. It’s all of us. Look at your dad and what he did to us.”
“Dad didn’t think we were Diggers.”
“He was wrong. He’s wrong now, too. We haven’t devolved into a dating club just because some of us have hooked up.” I put my hands on her shoulders and faced her. “You are going to figure out what you want to do. And when you do, I pity the people who get in your way.”
She smiled then, weakly, but still with a hint of the Cuthbert spark. “I’d better,” she said. “Because I don’t have any more Monets to give away.”
I chuckled at that, but was still worried. In this atmosphere of sharing, should I reveal my own secret?
“I wonder what Jamie was doing lurking around here,” she said. “You notice he’s always hanging around? I kind of got the idea on the beach earlier that Malcolm was trying to get away from him. Guess he finally wised up about that weirdo.”
Maybe not.
And I wondered if Clarissa was right in one respect—if Malcolm was trying to leave us alone with each other. Poe said he hadn’t told his friend about us, but that didn’t mean Malcolm couldn’t figure it out for himself. George had.
“Actually,” I said, and took a deep breath. “I’m supposed to meet with Jamie right about now. He’s helping me with swimming.” Okay, so not the whole truth.
Clarissa’s expression flashed from confused to polished almost instantaneously. “Really? That’s…nice. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah.” And we’ve been making out. Quite a lot, to be honest. And he’s a pretty good kisser. And funny, which you don’t realize at first, but yeah. Really funny. I think I’m starting to like him, Clarissa. Also a lot. So stop calling him a weirdo.
And yet, none of those things made it into verbalizations. I slipped my feet in and out of my borrowed flip-flops.
“Shouldn’t you go catch him?”
“Are we done talking?”
Clarissa tossed her hair back. “I’d say so. I’ve never been one for endless therapy sessions.” She squeezed my hand as I stood. “But thanks, Amy. It felt really good to get that off my chest.”
“I know the feeling,” I said. But the truth was, I only wanted to.
***
The afternoon passed quietly. Poe actually did take me for a swimming lesson—a real one, and for the most part, we kept our hands off each other. He taught me to blow bubbles, to float on my back, to tread water, and, finally, to do something incredibly scary called the dead man’s float.
“Breathe, Amy. When you breathe, you’re lighter than water,” he said as I spluttered to the surface again, saved from hysteria as much by Poe’s sure hands at my waist as by the fact that we were only chest-deep. “The reason this is good to learn is that it doesn’t take much energy to just float, unlike treading water. So if you ever fall off a boat again, you can do this for a lot longer.”
“Yeah, but I can’t hold my breath!” I said. “Just thinking about it freaks me out. Why can’t I float on my back instead?”
“Go ahead,” he said. I did, and promptly got a face full of water. “Oops, guess there was a wave.”
I coughed, scrambled to my feet, and splashed him back. “I call foul!”
He splashed me again, angling his palm against the water to produce maximum effect.
“Not fair!” I cried, pushing water back at him. “You’ve had a lot more practice than me.”
“You can say that again.” He placed his fist on the surface and squeezed, sending a cunning little stream right at me. I hopped, and splashed back, but my own waves fell short.
Poe kept advancing, both fists now squirting jets of water in tandem.
“Stop!” I cried, laughing and wading away as fast as my feet would take me. But Poe was quicker, and then he leapt for me and we both went under.
I held my breath this time, and when he pulled me to the surface moments later, I wasn’t coughing at all.
“There,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist as we bobbed. “You can do it.”
I pulled him close. Amazing how much less afraid of water I was when it became my preferred make-out spot.
***
Since we planned to put on the pageant before sunset (“The better to let them see us with, my dears,” as Odile said), the club of D177 congregated in the main house for an early dinner. The Myers were there, of course, presiding over their seafood feast, and some of the other patriarchs showed up to enjoy the atmosphere as well as the drawn butter. Salt was in a great mood, and Malcolm and Poe convinced him to whip up a batch of his apparently infamous Bahama rum punch, which tasted strongly of Campari and dyed red the lips and tongue of anyone who tasted it.
“Watch out for these,” Poe whispered to me on the sly, as I finished my first serving. “They’re sweet and you can drink them like water, but there’s a reason they call it ‘punch.’”
“Party pooper,” I said, reaching for the almost empty pitcher. I refilled my glass with the dregs.
“I’ll get more!” Darren volunteered, laying down his fork and grabbing the pitcher out of my hands.
“Good pretriarch,” George said, and ripped into another tail. We’d invited Darren to join our table for dinner, since he’d given us so much help with the preparations for the skit.
A few minutes later he returned and grabbed his own glass first.
“Uh, uh, uh,” Jenny said, lifting the filled-to-the-brim pitcher out of his hands. “The last thing we need is to get in trouble with your folks.”
“Any more than we already are?” Clarissa said. “Let the poor kid have a drink.”
“Yeah,” said Odile. “Drinking ages are for wussies. It’s not like he’s about to get in a car or anything. There’s no safer place to experiment.”
But Jenny handed the pitcher off to Ben, on her other side, and Darren watched it make the rounds without him getting so much as a taste.
I just rolled my eyes and sipped (carefully!) at my drink. Interesting flavor, but I think I preferred the tang of our official drink, the 312, to the bitter/sweet taste of the punch. Darren pouted for a few moments, then brightened when George sneaked him a flask and a can of Coke.
Thus fulfilling our quota of illegal activities for the evening, we settled down to dinner. I dug into my blackened snapper and watched Ben and Clarissa have a lobster-cleaning contest (Ben won, but admitted he was still ashamed at the trouncing he’d received from Demetria on the tennis court that afternoon).
As the mountain of seafood dwindled and the bottle of Campari sta
rted running low, we all drank a toast to our providers, Malcolm, Poe, and the Myers, and packed up for the hike out to the crescent beach. It was decided that Ben and Demetria would take the skiff out around the island, since I wasn’t yet comfortable enough around water to play navigator. I’d only get in the rowboat once they’d pulled it into the relatively shallow zone of the lagoon.
So off we went, into the gathering Florida dusk. The roar of crickets and other insects in the woods drowned out the sound of the waves from the nearby shoreline. I kept my eyes turned toward the treetops, hoping for another glimpse of the ospreys, but we were all making too much noise for them to show themselves.
Odile had a steady lecture going as we walked. “And then, Kevin, you have to make sure to angle the sword so it gets the light of the sun, or they won’t be able to see it. You don’t need to move fast—it’s more for looks than any—” She froze, covered her mouth with her hand, and gagged, shoulders convulsing so hard that she lost her balance and fell to her knees on the path, gasping as she began to vomit into the bushes.
Moments later, everyone else joined her.
17. Suspicions
There were several occasions, during the horrible quarter of an hour that followed, that I thought I, too, was going to be sick to my stomach. Projectile vomiting is not something anyone can watch with impunity. I almost lost my cookies just from listening to them.
Eventually, they recovered enough to stagger back to the main house. The skit was clearly off, even if half of our costumes hadn’t been ruined in the deluge.
Oh. Ick. Amy… Would it be okay if I just skipped the details? Suffice to say I can go a long, long time without seeing anything like that again. Or hearing it. Or…smelling it.
“Food poisoning,” I gasped out to Salt as I deposited my last semiconscious fellow knight on the porch. “I think they all need water. Or Gatorade. Or something.”
Actually, I thought they all needed to be airlifted back to the mainland to have what was left inside their stomachs pumped.
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