“Come on,” Hopper was chanting. “Kiss her. With tongue. You know you’ll like it.”
I pulled away from Lara, who uttered a wobbly “Hey” and smiled uncertainly at me. I managed to get to my feet as Hopper muttered something I couldn’t understand and Luke lurched drunkenly to his feet, asking if I was okay.
“Yeah, just—I think I need to get some air. Maybe walk.”
“I’ll come with you.”
A few days ago this was exactly what I’d been hoping would happen, that Luke would ask me to walk along the beach again, that we might end up making out on the sand this time, and maybe going somewhere in his car after. Down the road a few miles was a scenic lookout where kids went to park—but the smart ones drove an extra ten minutes, taking a dirt road up to another lookout, where the cops didn’t come by to make sure people weren’t having sex or getting high.
I had no intention of getting high. But in my purse, wrapped in tissue and stuffed in the bottom of my makeup bag, was one of the condoms my mother had insisted on keeping stocked in the linen closet since I turned thirteen. It was just in case—Mom had been preaching “just in case” forever—but I had been well on the way to convincing myself that Luke was the one, until I met Jack.
Now I wasn’t so sure. So much had happened today, and between the filthy torn jacket and the thing with Lara, I’d experienced two powerful visions. Every vision left me feeling tingly and light-headed, but these last two were different. They seemed somehow more directed at me, more … urgent. Certainly, they were physically more painful and exhausting. And I couldn’t help thinking that they were linked, that they were leading to something that had happened in this town, something I was supposed to do something about. The trouble was, I had no idea what. I only knew that after this last vision I felt nauseated and weak and about to cry.
“I’m good,” I forced myself to say, with a grin that probably wasn’t very convincing. Between the moonlight and the streetlights high above, I could make out the confusion on Luke’s face. “Maybe in a while,” I added, “after I walk a little.”
“What do you mean, in a while? Let’s go now.” He threw an arm around my shoulders, and I could smell the liquor on his breath. It wasn’t hard to duck out of his grip, even as he tried to grab my arm. “Hey! C’mere!”
“Sorry, Luke, I think I want to be by myself right now.”
He muttered something that sounded a lot like “goddamn tease,” and as I started down the beach, I was glad I’d turned him down. I’d thought he was a pretty good guy when he wasn’t drinking, but any interest I’d had in him was gone.
I watched the moon glimmering far out over the ocean, a pale yellow globe whose reflection danced on the water. The ocean was so beautiful here. I’d taken it for granted in San Francisco. I took off my flip-flops and felt the sand on my feet, soft and damp and cool. The sounds of the party grew fainter behind me, and seagulls hoping for a handout wheeled and screeched above, finally giving up and going wherever they go to sleep at night.
“Hey, Clare.”
I turned to see someone jogging toward me. For a moment I thought it was Luke, but then I saw the outline of his long hair: Jack.
“Hi,” I said, waiting for him. A wave came farther up the beach, covering my feet, making them sink into the sand.
“What’d you say to Luke?”
“Nothing. I just didn’t want to walk with him.” Jack stood close enough that I could see the moon reflected in his eyes. “He called me a tease.”
“Are you?”
I was so stunned by his question that I didn’t answer. I felt both offended and intrigued, because I didn’t think that was what he was really asking me.
“Whatever,” Jack said, when I didn’t answer. “But look. You should stay out of the water.”
I bristled at his tone. I didn’t like being told what to do. Mom had given me a lot of freedom—but I liked to think I’d earned it, keeping my grades up and following most of her rules. I’d never been in any trouble at school, but then again, you’d have to do something really spectacular at Blake to get in trouble, since they prided themselves on having such a creative—read permissive—atmosphere.
“I’m not drunk.”
“Didn’t say you were. Still, it’s not a great idea to be in the water by yourself in the dark. People die on the coast every summer.”
“People died right here in Winston the last two summers.”
Jack laughed unexpectedly, a bitter, soulless sound. “Fine. Suit yourself.”
He started to walk away from me and I didn’t want him to go. “Wait. Jack.”
“Listen, I’m not your babysitter. Do whatever you want.”
“No, it’s not that. I’m sorry. Can we—can we start over?”
For a minute he paused, and I saw him in silhouette against the glow of the far-off bonfire. Broad shoulders. Those ridiculous shredded shorts. Hair blowing in the breeze. Hands clenched into fists … slowly relaxing.
He turned back to me, his expression unreadable. “My dad volunteered in the fire department. He pulled people out of the water, did search and rescue, all that. Know what he gave me on my tenth birthday?”
“What?”
“A bunch of pictures of motorcycle and bike accidents where the victims weren’t wearing their helmets. Not pretty, lots of brains on pavement.”
“Wow.” I swallowed; the image wasn’t doing much for my unsettled stomach. Still, I was feeling better otherwise; my head had stopped pounding and the dizziness had faded. “Bet you felt ripped off.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he saved my life.”
There was a gruffness to Jack’s voice that was hard to read.
“Well. He sounds … like a concerned dad.”
“He was.”
Was?
I knew I should say something, but in my wobbly state the moment passed while I was clumsily trying to find the words, and then I was just standing there feeling stupid, wondering if Jack’s dad had died or just left, like mine. Although fathers who took the time to worry about their kids’ safety didn’t strike me as the kind who left. My own father had barely paid any attention to me when he lived with us, and once he was gone, it was like he forgot about me. For my tenth birthday, my dad had sent me a princess costume that might have fit a five-year-old, and a card in which he wrote that he’d call soon. Which had kept me going for a while, because back then I still believed his promises.
“So, you want to walk some more?” He had already set out down the beach ahead of me, and I had to race to catch up.
“Um, sure.” I tried to think of what we could talk about; Jack didn’t exactly invite conversation. “Did you try those hard lemonades Ky brought?”
“I don’t drink.”
“Oh. You don’t?” I was barely managing two or three words at a time.
“Or smoke. Or anything.”
“Is it because of soccer?”
“No. I’m quitting the team.” He paused, then seemed to relent. “It’s no big deal. I partied a lot, for a while. After my dad died. I didn’t like what it did to me.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “How long ago was it … I mean, did it happen in a fire?”
“No. He was an electrician. There was an accident at a job site.” Jack spoke without any emotion, hands jammed in his pockets.
“I’m so sorry,” I repeated, feeling stupid. I shouldn’t have asked. “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to my mom.”
“It’s okay. I was messed up for a while, but my uncle beat the shit out of me after I got in trouble a few times.”
“And that was … a good thing?”
“Kept me from getting worse. He went to school and talked to my guidance counselor and they worked something out. Suddenly I was working at the clinic after school.”
“Is that why you don’t hang out with everyone? Because you’re always working?”
“Who told you I don’t hang out with them?”
I could
feel myself blush. I was going to kill Rachel. “I only meant … I haven’t seen you around. At the beach.”
“Your crowd parties a lot.”
I couldn’t tell if I detected judgment in his voice—or a warning. “They’re not my crowd,” I said defensively.
His laugh was the same as before—abrupt and bitter. “Yeah? Seems like you’re always around Rachel.”
“Rachel’s not what you think.”
“How do you know what I think?”
I couldn’t help it—I was stung by his tone. “What about the rest of them? You hate everyone? Is that it?”
Jack rolled his eyes, and ticked off a list on his fingers.
“Rick and Ky are on the soccer team. Hopper’s been in my Spanish class since middle school. Luke lives a couple of blocks from me; we both got suspended from school in ninth grade for jumping the fence to chase a coyote at recess. I don’t have anything against any of them.”
I wanted to ask him how well he knew all the girls, too—I was thinking of the way Jenna had looked at him. Maybe that was it—maybe Rachel liked him. I’d never seen a guy turn her down, but maybe Jack had, and now she couldn’t stand him.
“Can I ask you something?” It seemed important to figure this one out, since it involved my best friend and the only guy in Winston I’d found myself attracted to. “What’s the real reason you don’t like Rachel?”
“Nothing, really. She’s … popular. I’m just surprised that you and she have anything in common. How do you know her, anyway? Didn’t you just move here?”
I wondered if I should be offended. “Our moms were in a playgroup together when we were little—Rachel and I were very close until I moved away. We kept in touch.”
“You used to live here?”
“Yeah, Rachel didn’t tell you that?”
“No. Makes me wonder what else I don’t know about you.”
Somehow, we had stopped walking. Jack put his hand on my arm, turning me toward him.
And then he kissed me.
I’d made out with a few boys. There was Dan Schwermer, a sculptor at Blake. Zack Sengupta, who went to a prep school in the city but lived in our apartment building. A few others. I hadn’t dated any of them for long, but I liked almost everything about the kissing.
There on Black Rock Beach, in the summer before my junior year, in the town that had been my home once before and now would be again, I discovered that I didn’t know anything.
Kissing Jack was nothing like kissing any other boy I’d ever known. He put a hand against my neck, and his fingers were rough and warm, sending little earthquakes through my skin as they traced my ear and wound through my hair. His lips brushed against mine lightly at first, his lips barely parted. I heard myself make a sound, a faint moan, and Jack kissed me harder.
He twisted my hair between his fingers, kissing me along my chin and my jaw. I looked up to the moon and wondered what I was doing. After a few seconds, I gave up and let him hold me closer. But as I touched the soft worn fabric of his shirt, I involuntarily sucked in my breath. The electric response was immediate, the swirling, splintering flashes of a vision causing me to stumble. I tried to push him away before it went too far, before the visions claimed me, and I was thinking, Not him, not him, please please just not him.
But Jack pulled me back against him. He wrapped his strong arms around me and didn’t say a word, and even through the skittering, flashing memories in my mind, the memories that weren’t mine, the ones I didn’t want to know, I was not able to resist. The attraction was too powerful, and I knew that if Jack released me I might fall, so I let the vision come while his chin bristled against my throat and made me tremble all the more.
Some sort of wall was lurching past, yelling, the sound of things breaking. No, wait, the wall was still, and I was running. I felt strong, I could run all night. Yes. Night. A parking lot, a brick building, pools of yellow light from tall streetlamps. Shouting. In my hand something heavy, something that felt right, all my anger coursing through my arm and into the thing I held as I smashed it against a window. The glass breaking, and for a moment I was—satisfied? No, not exactly, because the rage came back stronger. I needed to break something else, and fast, because my fury was like an itch in my skin, a burn in my veins, a scream lodged in my throat.
If I could just destroy something. If I could just destroy enough … Then maybe it would back down. Even a little. In my hands, the bat—yes, it was a baseball bat—landed hard and shattered another window.
And then the silvery veil floated down and I felt nothing but relief to be back in my own head, my own thoughts, my own memories.
I pushed my hands against Jack’s chest, and this time he let me go. Stepping back, I wrapped my arms around myself. Now I was cold, misty spray from the gentle waves dampening my legs, the hem of my shorts.
Jack had done something terrible. I wasn’t naïve—when you had a gift like mine, naïveté was a luxury you didn’t get to keep. I’d seen all kinds of private deeds, enough that I understood that wrongdoing isn’t limited to one kind of person, one fraction of society. Over the years I’d touched hundreds of articles of clothing. Trust me, you do too, you just don’t realize it; people brush past you in crowds, buses, stores, school hallways, church. Unless you lock yourself in a room, you can’t avoid it.
Teachers, camp counselors, businessmen, waitresses, priests, old people, and kids—there is no specific type of person, no particular occupation that signals secret wrongdoing, so I’ve never learned who to avoid.
I just really didn’t want it to be Jack.
“What?” he asked roughly, no trace of warmth in his voice.
“I’m fine,” I said quickly. “Just a little cold. Let’s get back to the fire.”
I started walking before he could reply, taking long strides and kicking up sand.
I was conscious of him following close behind. I wanted him to follow me. I didn’t truly want to get away from him, only to try to understand what I had seen. Yes, it was violent and yes, I’d felt incredible anger. Jack was dangerous.
But I wanted to know more. And I couldn’t forget the way his arms felt around me, the taste of his lips on mine.
By the time we got back to the fire, Jack was walking apart from me, his hands jammed in his pockets. At the last minute I paused, close enough to see the glow of the fire reflected off his face, but far enough away that I could hear the laughter from the kids gathered around it, if not their words. I searched Jack’s expression for signs of the turmoil that had marked the vision, but all I saw was frustration … and desire. I knew, because I felt it too, a heat that seared my insides even while my skin was chilled by the night air.
“I want to see you again,” Jack muttered.
You do? I kept my expression as neutral as I could. Even after what I’d sensed, what I’d seen, I didn’t want him any less. Looking into his eyes, into the darkness and the secrets, I sensed there was a lot more to him than he was letting on, that for every thought he shared, there were a dozen more that he didn’t.
And … I wasn’t afraid of him. Despite the powerful rage I’d sensed in his memories, I didn’t believe it could ever be directed at me. But was that wishful thinking? Could he truly be dangerous?
I wanted to know more about him. I wanted to go deeper.
I wanted him to want me, and I couldn’t resist his invitation. Maybe that was crazy, but when Jack grabbed my hand and pulled me against him, I hesitated before breaking away, and even then I only did it so I wouldn’t have to endure the vision again.
“Do you have to work at your uncle’s place during the week?”
“Yeah. Early. It opens at eight.” He looked away, toward the black ocean. “He’s been sick. Lung cancer. He was lucky, they caught it in stage one.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He’ll get better. What about you? What do you do during the week?”
“I work on my designs. I go out to thrift stores and garage sales and estat
e sales, and I scavenge vintage stuff.” I knew I was rambling, and couldn’t stop. “Clothes, fabric, buttons … everything, really. Then I take things apart and restyle them.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Jack said, finally looking at me again. “They have garage sales on Sunday, right?”
“Uh, yes …”
“I’ll drive.”
I blinked. If I wasn’t mistaken, Jack had just asked me out. Sort of. “Um, sure, yeah. Only, when I say scavenging … I’m talking one step up from Dumpster diving sometimes. I get stuff off curbs all the time.”
“I don’t have a problem with that. Maybe I’ll learn something. What time?”
Tell him you’re busy. I heard Rachel’s voice in my head, coaching me on how to get a guy interested and keep him that way—and her system involved a lot of acting like you weren’t really into him.
Which, now that I was talking to Jack, seemed sort of stupid. Even if it worked wonders for her—Rachel had seemingly never not gotten what she wanted.
“I’m sort of … flexible.”
There was a burst of laughter from the other side of the campfire. I glanced over and saw that the horsing around had pretty much given way to more serious pursuits—drinking and talking, with a few kids making out or lying in the sand, wasted enough to simply stare at the moon.
Self-conscious, I backed away from Jack. I wasn’t embarrassed to be seen with him. I just wasn’t ready for everyone—especially Rachel—to know about it yet. I wanted it to be just … my secret, for a while.
“I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty,” Jack said. Not asking.
“You want the address?”
“I know where you live. The haunted dress shop.”
CHAPTER NINE
I SAT ON THE CURB AT THE TOP of the hill with Giselle and Victoria, who were full-on drunk, wishing Rachel would hurry up. I just wanted to drive everyone home so I could get some sleep before Jack picked me up in the morning.
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