VIOLET EYES

by Nicole Luiken

  A very strange form of resuscitation, I realized, as his lips shaped mine. More like a kiss.

  He knew I was faking!

  I almost jackknifed upright at the realization but managed to turn it into a weak cough instead. I rolled onto my side and heaved in several breaths just as two lifeguards dashed over.

  “Is she okay? What happened?”

  “I’m fine,” I said weakly, and coughed again.

  Someone crouched by my side. The devil himself. “Are you sure you’re all right, Angel? You scared the hell out of me.” Mike’s voice was perfect, rough and concerned, but his eyes held unholy glee.

  It made me want to kick him.

  “You—you dropped me.” My voice quavered.

  Our audience thought I was being a tad ungrateful. “He saved your life,” someone said.

  “Did he?” I smiled bravely. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.” I’ll pay you back for this if it’s the last thing I do.

  Mike caught the unspoken message loud and clear, but he just grinned.

  I accepted a lifeguard’s help up. “I want to go home now.”

  Both the lifeguards were male, so an older woman with two kids went into the dressing room with me to make sure I didn’t faint.

  I took an extra-long time washing my hair to make sure Mike wouldn’t hang around waiting for me outside, thanked the lady, and then climbed on my bike.

  I pedaled home furiously. I was mad at myself for pulling such a juvenile stunt. I’d wanted to get back at Mike for his trick, but I hadn’t meant to worry anyone else. Stupid, stupid. But mostly I was mad at Mike for seeing through my ruse so easily. Every time I thought about the way he’d kissed me, a red wave of fury and embarrassment rushed through me.

  The only good thing about it was that from now on I wouldn’t have to just pretend he was my enemy. Now he really was.

  Two blocks from home I remembered the green onions and had to go back for them.

  I was sweaty, hot, and mad when I finally arrived home. I heard Mom laugh as I went in the door and swung around to the kitchen to drop off the onions.

  When I got there my jaw dropped open. Sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, laughing with my mother, was Mike.

  “What are you doing here?” I spoke without thinking.

  Mom frowned at my tone.

  “I came here to apologize,” Mike said.

  Apologize, my foot. “I meant, how did you know where I lived?” And could I move somewhere else?

  Mom spoke up unexpectedly. “Your father and Mr. Vallant work together. I’ve invited the Vallants to supper this evening. Mike came over a little early when he realized you were the one he’d run into at the pool.”

  My back prickled, and I glared at Mike. Exactly what had he told my mother about what happened at the pool? That I’d almost drowned or that I’d pretended to drown? I didn’t know which would be worse.

  Mike read my mind. “I’m sorry for throwing you in the pool.” He looked sincere, but I didn’t trust him.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Angel!” Mom seemed to be expecting something more.

  “Apology accepted. And I apologize for calling you a brainless turd.”

  Mike’s lips quirked. “Friends, then?” He held out his hand.

  Mom was watching. “Of course.” I bared my teeth so Mike would know I was lying, gave his hand the limpest of clasps, then swept up to my room.

  My mom followed me ten minutes later. “You weren’t very gracious.”

  “You weren’t there,” I said shortly.

  She looked impatient. “All he did was throw you in the pool. I’ve seen you push Wendy in lots of times.”

  She was right, I acknowledged silently, after she finished lecturing me on behaving myself that evening. It wasn’t getting thrown in the pool that had shaken me—after lying in the sun, the water had been a pleasant shock.

  What had rattled me was his kiss.

  CHAPTER 3

  DINNER THAT NIGHT signaled the start of the undeclared little war between Mike and me.

  We eyed each other warily while the four adults had cocktails; we searched for weaknesses over the boeuf au jus and were needling each other openly by dessert.

  “I can smell your perfume. What is it? Chlorine Green?” He kept his tone low and pleasant, to fool the adults at the other end of the table.

  “Your nose hairs are blocking your sense of smell. I have some tweezers I can lend you” I murmured back.

  I was so wrapped up in scoring points off Mike and avoiding his thrusts that I didn’t notice right away what was happening with our parents.

  I hadn’t taken to either of Mike’s parents right off the bat. Mr. Valiant—“Call me Drake,” he’d said with a camera-perfect smile—was handsome but too slick.

  He’d brought champagne for some incomprehensible reason and insisted on opening it with a flourish. He had raised his glass in the direction of my mothen “To our beautiful hostess.”

  Mrs. Valiant was a plump woman who thought she was thin. Her skirt was too tight and too short, and she was overdressed for a simple dinner at home. She was still very pretty, and might once have been gorgeous, but her pout ruined any lingering beauty. Beside her, my mother’s fresh prettiness shone.

  Mrs. Valiant’s girlish giggle annoyed me. “I’ve got bubbles up my nose. Oops! There goes another one.” She seemed to think this the height of wit.

  Drake regarded her with a thinly veiled contempt that only made her try harder. He concentrated all his charm on my mother, raving over the meal.

  “Oh, no,” Mom said, flustered and pleased. “Really, it’s just roast beef and mashed potatoes with a French name.”

  “It’s wonderful,” Drake said, still fawning.

  Whenever my dad tried to change the subject by asking him something about work, Drake cut him off. “No office talk here, Neddy! Tell me, are there any decent golf courses around here?”

  “Well, there’s the one—”

  “Of course, you have to go to the city to find a really challenging course,” Mr. Valiant interrupted disparagingly. “With my handicap, country golf courses are too simple.”

  Dad nodded, but I could tell he was bored. He tried to exchange a can-you-believe-this? look with Mom, but she wasn’t watching. She was actually laughing at Drake’s bragging.

  Mike saw my glance. “Better watch out,” he said sotto voce. “My father’s quite a ladies’ man.”

  “If you like golf bums,” I hissed back.

  My dad and Mrs. Valiant grew ever more silent as the evening progressed, although Mom and Drake were having a ball. All in all, it ranked up there in uncomfortable meals with the time Uncle Albert and Aunt Patty came to dinner and Uncle Albert complained vocally about the burned chicken my mother had made. I was very relieved when the Valiants finally went home.

  On Saturday I caught myself debating whether or not I should go to the party, since Carl had invited Mike. That made me furious because the gang had been my friends first. I went, in the end, and was very glad, since Mike didn’t show up.

  Maryanne watched for his car all evening and confessed that she “liked him.” I held my tongue with an act of will. Everybody else seemed favorably impressed with him.

  I didn’t see Mike again until the first day of school. We opened up hostilities in the hallway before homeroom, where I had been talking with Maryanne. “Well, if it isn’t the boy wonder in the flesh.”

  “Good morning to you, too, Angel. Stomped on any kittens yet today?”

  “No, but there’s a slug on the bottom of my shoe. Excuse me while I go scrape it off.” I strode off down the hall.

  After a few paralyzed seconds Maryanne followed me to my locker. She was gaping, and I realized that until now Wendy and Carl were the only ones who’d seen Mike and me together. “I take it you two don’t get along?”

  “No.” I smiled tightly as I dialed the combination and opened my locker. “I just don’t think he’s the Superm
an the rest of you do. Do you mind?”

  Maryanne looked puzzled, but also a little relieved. “Oh, well. Less competition.”

  I laughed. Every time I wrote Maryanne off as a total scatterbrain she came up with something as pragmatic as that.

  Mike was a grade ahead of me, so we shared few classes. Unfortunately, because of the small student population of Chinchaga High School there weren’t enough students to make a full class unless all three grades were pooled for some electives. My Drama 20 class included Drama 10 and Drama 30 students, and it was the same for phys ed. (Phys Ed 10 was compulsory, but Phys Ed 20 and 30 were electives and ran together.) Mike was in both my drama and phys ed classes.

  In phys ed our new teacher, Mr. Hrudey, broke tradition and started us off playing roundrobin badminton instead of Volleyball.

  Because the gym was only big enough for three singles matches to be played at once I sat out the first two rounds and got a chance to see Mike in action.

  He was as depressingly good as all the trophies had led me to believe. He whomped Wendy without trouble. Wendy liked to push herself, and she wasn’t afraid to sweat, but she always played as if she were hitting tennis balls instead of light, rubber-tipped birdies, swinging her whole arm and forgetting to flick her wrist.

  Then Mike sat out while I played my first match against Maiyanne. She was a mediocre player at best. Of the four badminton shots she could only do clears consistently. She’d never mastered smashes, and her drops and drives were accidental instead of strategic. It took effort, but I managed to flub a few easy shots and coasted through to a mere 11-9 victory. I didn’t want Mike to know the extent of my skill.

  I played Carl next, and he was a little harder. Unlike most competitors he gave nothing away with his body language. I never knew which way he planned to leap, so I couldn’t place my shots accordingly. He had a powerful arm and could smash birdies like missiles, but he had no sense of strategy. I let him win 15-11. (For some chauvinistic reason women’s singles went to 11 points, while men’s and mixed went to 15 points.)

  I sat another one out and then faced Mike. I could tell from the anticipation on his face that he had fallen for my little act. He thought he could beat me—no problem. He gave up first service without even spinning the racket. “Go ahead and serve. I—”

  I gave him my drive serve, fast and mean, straight at his face. He flinched and missed. One point for me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said with false contrition. “Shall I re-serve?”

  “No, that’s all right.” Mike scooped the birdie back up at me. I served again, weakly, pretending the drive had been a fluke. Service went to him, and he scored. We traded points for severed rounds, his points all falling through blatant holes in my defense, while mine were little dribblers that shouldn’t have made it over the net but did, or shots that looked as if they would fall out of bounds but didn’t. He looked frustrated but still seemed confident of his skill.

  When I pulled ahead 7-6 I suddenly changed tactics, catching Mike by surprise. I wound up my arm as if to do a high, arcing, clear but pulled back at the last second so that the birdie dropped suddenly at the front of the court instead. My smashes gained power, and the weak backhand I’d been feigning disappeared. Wham! Wham! Wham! I was up three points before he realized he’d been tricked.

  He rallied and got another point back, making it 10-7. After that we both played relentlessly, smashing the shuttlecock back and forth, forcing each other to run to all corners of the court, sliding shots along the net, and trading point for point. Mike returned several spectacular backhand clears—the hardest shot of all—but they only set me up for my point. We were equals on the court, but his earlier overconfidence cost him, and I won 15-13.

  “Nice game,” Mike said as we shook hands over the net. “Too bad you don’t have the stamina to keep it up.”

  I was so furious I spotted my next opponent five points. My next game happened to be against my ex-boyfriend, Sean, and my words wiped the easy smile right off his face. He was almost a foot taller than I was and in pretty good shape from playing softball. He looked offended. “No.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Ten points, then.” I served before he could protest again.

  I won 15-10.

  I rather regretted spotting Sean the points when I saw the tight look on his face afterward. “Congratulations, Angel.” He stalked off the court and threw his racket in the corner.

  I swore mentally. I shouldn’t have stomped on his pride quite so hard. If Wendy had been right about Sean still liking me, I’d certainly cured him of it now.

  In spite of his temper, Sean was a nice guy: good sense of humor, a bit of a flirt, and a wonderful dancer. I felt bad about the way we’d broken up. I had the terrible suspicion I’d hurt him, and I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t broken things off with him because of anything he’d done or because I’d liked someone else. It was simply my policy not to date any boy for longer than a month.

  Then I saw the ecstatic expression on Coach Hrudey’s face and forgot about Sean.

  “What a great team!” Coach raved. “Mike, Angel, I’m matching you up for mixed doubles.”

  For once Mike and I were in complete agreement. “No!”

  But Coach ignored our arguments, and I soon found myself standing on the same side of the net as Mike.

  I was determined to lose, and so was Mike. We were terrible together. We ran into each other, whacked each other with our metal rackets, and allowed shots to the middle of the court to fall between us without moving a muscle to try to reach them.

  Coach Hrudey called a halt to the farce in midgame. “What are you doing?” His thick hands squeezed air. “You’re being beaten by Wendy and Maryanne, for heaven’s sake. The same Wendy and Maryanne you slaughtered separately.”

  “We don’t mesh together,” I said.

  “Maybe you should put us on different teams,” Mike added.

  Coach looked up, blue eyes shrewd. “You’re not working as a team. Get back on the court. The next one of you to fumble an easy shot crabwalks around the gym.”

  He could hardly have come up with a better punishment. I could have borne laps, but not crawling around on my back while Mike looked on and laughed.

  This time not a single shot got through our defense. We recovered our deficit and pulled into the lead, winning easily.

  “That’s more like it.” Coach nodded in approval.

  Mike and I exchanged looks. I read my thought on his face. I did not want to be paired with him, but at the same time I was determined not to give in first.

  The issue was still unresolved when I got home that afternoon. I had the house to myself, a rarity.

  It was very quiet. I could hear someone in the neighborhood mowing the lawn. A couple of kids rattled by on bikes. The refrigerator hummed.

  I turned on the TV just to make some noise. CBC was still discussing the recent Meech Lake Accord, so I switched to Edmonton’s ITV. I lounged back on the couch, alternately crunching on an apple and helping the contestants question the Jeopardy answer, but it was an act for a hidden audience.

  I couldn’t shake the creepy feeling that someone was watching me.

  Which, of course, someone was. I just didn’t notice it as much when Mom and Dad were home.

  Mom came home at five, just a few minutes before Dad got home from work. She whipped off her sunglasses and went straight to work chopping carrots in the kitchen.

  Dad arrived and kissed her on the cheek. “Where were you at four? I called to tell you I’d be a little late.”

  She didn’t meet his eyes. “Out shopping.”

  Dad nodded, but I remembered that Mom hadn’t been carrying any bags.

  I was only puzzled then, but twice more in the next two weeks she came home after I did, her head down, but her cheeks flushed with high color. Dad stopped teasing her and started frowning. Despite my efforts, supper conversation dragged.

  I didn’t get really worried, however, until the afternoon a
few of us went downtown to play pool during our noon hour. Mike was beating the pants off Maryanne, but she didn’t seem to mind as she flirted with him. I was psyching myself up for a grudge match when I happened to look out the window and see my mother getting into someone’s car—some man’s car. A sporty white BMW, not the blue Plymouth my dad drove.

  She was laughing, and she looked very young.

  I felt as if someone had plunged a knife into my chest.

  How could she? How could she do this to Dad and me?

  I had caught a glimpse of the man’s dark head and recognized him. It was Mr. Valiant.

  I turned quickly to see if Mike had seen, but he was concentrating on his shot, smoothly sinking both the one ball and the five ball. Of course, he might have seen this kind of thing before. “My father’s quite a ladies’ man.”

  Mike was something of a ladies’ man himself. He was flirting with Maryanne now, and Maryanne had told me he’d asked Belinda Potter out to a movie last weekend.

  I thought about asking Mike to help me break our parents up. Between the two of us we could come up with something. But no. Mike and I were enemies. I had to remember that. There might be an innocent reason for Mr. Valiant and my mother to be driving together, but Mike would always be my enemy, my competitor.

  We were still partners on the badminton court, still holding to the truce imposed on us by Coach Hrudey, but that only meant we’d gotten sneakier about continuing our war. When I returned our opponents’ shots, it wasn’t with the aim of scoring a point, but to set them up to shoot a real zinger at Mike. He did three spectacular saves in one game before he caught on and started doing the same thing to me.

  Off the court, we played tricks.

  Mike conned my mother into giving him a particularly ugly picture of me as a five-year-old playing in the mud and had it printed in the school newspaper with the caption “Your halo’s slipping.”

  I put mustard in his milk shake.

  He stole my sports bra from my gym locker and hoisted it up the flagpole.

  I retaliated by getting him a date with not one, not two, but three different girls on the same night.