Mags’s lamp is on. I know she’s waiting up for me, but I ignore the invitation, go to my room, and shut the door.
I lie there for a long, long time, staring at the dried buttercups hanging in my window. After the house has gone quiet, a light rain falls. I’m almost lulled to sleep when I sense a change in the darkness and open my eyes.
Headlights shine through my curtains. They burn in place for a while, then glide up the wall, across the ceiling, and are gone.
ELEVEN
NEXT MORNING, JESSE walks his fingers up my spine as he heads past me into the fields, following Shea and Mason. Later, I see him pause to watch me across the rows, but when I wave, he only gives a flick of his hand that somebody could mistake for swatting flies.
I think we’re supposed to be a secret.
I don’t mind. I’ve played this game before, too. Don’t touch me in front of my buddies, don’t smile like we’ve got something going on. Maybe I didn’t expect it from Jesse, but I’ll run with it.
I’ve loaded forty-six boxes by ten thirty, more than I’ve ever done before lunch break. My heart feels like a bird slamming itself against a cage, and I squat down on my heels to catch my breath when I see Duke’s pickup coming up over the rise.
He grabs my boxes, carries them to the bed, then notices me looking at him. “What’s up?”
“Who would you say rakes the most in a day?” I straighten up. “I mean, who’s had the most boxes this harvest, that you’ve seen?”
Duke leans on the truck, scratching at his chest. He’s hairy like a bear under that Harley shirt, I can testify; on scorchers, he strips right down. “Coupla migrant fellas over toward the south end. But Bob’s picking up his share, too, so I don’t see everything.” He squints at me. “Why?”
I shrug. “Just wondering.” He loads our boxes, both mine and Mags’s, then drives on.
Mags watches him go. When she turns back, she comes out with the one thing that’s been eating at me all morning. “Somebody was parked outside the house last night. Just sitting there.”
I pick up my rake. “Probably somebody pulled over to text.”
“At two in the morning? On our road?” I don’t say anything. “Maybe it was that cop, Darce. You think of that? Maybe he was waiting to see what you’d do after he bluffed you about that witness.” She sounds mad, but I know Mags. She’s scared and putting up a front. “He was bluffing, right?”
“I wasn’t at that party. Kat and I went out driving.”
We rake a minute. “You can tell me things, you know.”
“I know.” The quiet stretches out. I trust Mags. She’d cut her tongue out before she told a secret. But if she thought she was doing the right thing—saving me from myself, using that good head on her shoulders—she’d speak up. And I can’t have that. Because in this case, this one time, doing the right thing would be wrong for everybody. It would rip the heart out of who we are, and Nell—our Nellie, who we used to hold in the grass and tickle with dandelions, who helped Mags walk all the way home from Back Ridge Road when she twisted her ankle, who cries over old movies and has enough dreams left in her to love an actor who died before our moms were born—couldn’t be who she is anymore. I don’t even want to think about who people in this town would make her out to be.
“If you see the car again, tell Mom.” Mags sounds stiff. I’ve hurt her. “And don’t say anything to Nell. She’ll be seeing kidnappers everywhere.”
“No. I won’t tell Nell.”
An early moon hangs in a still bright-blue sky at five o’clock when I toss my rake into the bin and clap my gloves together, sending tiny green leaves and sticks flying.
Nell comes on the run. “Did you see it?” She waves toward the camper when I stare at her. “On the board. Mrs. Wardwell wrote your name.”
Mags catches up to us and we go take a look. D. Prentiss is scrawled in the last slot, number ten. Three slots below Gaines. I’m not the only girl on the board, but I’m the only local one.
I can’t help it; I whoop and do a little victory dance, throwing one of those high kicks we learned in cheerleading in sixth grade. Mags laughs, catching my shoulders before I tip over.
Mrs. Wardwell watches from her chair and snorts. “You boys better look out,” she calls. “She’s comin’ to get ya.”
She’s making fun of me, but I don’t care. I never thought I’d make it on to the board this harvest, period, and my tired feet feel a little lighter as we walk to the car.
There’s a folded piece of paper waiting for us under the wiper. Mags opens it, reads the message, and sighs, holding it out to me.
In round, messy handwriting that fits Jesse perfectly, it says: Quarry tomorrow before work be ready 6:00.
I look around, but he and Shea and Mason are already gone. Nice how he doesn’t wait to see if I want to go or anything, just assumes the answer is yes. Which it is.
“Oh no,” Nell says, and we follow her gaze. Two cop cruisers are coming up the barrens road. “Darcy, they’re not here for you, are they?”
Maybe Edgecombe’s behind one of those tinted windshields. Maybe he really wasn’t bluffing last night about the witness, the person who said they’d seen me in the barrens. It’s not until the cruisers pass by that I can breathe again. “Don’t be crazy.” But my voice doesn’t sound quite right.
Everybody in the field watches the cops continue on to the cabins. “Wonder what they’re going up there for,” Mags says.
Nobody has an answer.
I try to stay up late that night to see if the car comes back, but sleep wins out. The next thing I know, my alarm is going off at five thirty a.m. and my whole body is crying nooo.
What the crap was I thinking? I can barely get myself out of bed in time for work, and that’s an extra half hour of sleep on top of this. I tiptoe into the shower and shave everything that needs it, then put on my hot-pink bikini under a white mesh cover-up.
By the time I’m at the kitchen table, I remember to be nervous, and can’t eat more than a couple bites of breakfast. I scribble a note for Mom—Gone swimming—then sit on the porch steps with my tote, hoping Jesse has the sense not to rev his engine when he gets here and wake everybody up.
He doesn’t try anything fancy, just idles and waits for me to climb in. He’s shirtless, wearing an unzipped hoodie over baggy surf shorts and sandals; he looks as tired as I do, and we don’t say much more than hey before he pulls a U-ie and drives toward the quarry.
Downtown is hushed and empty, only a few employee cars parked at the Irving station and Hannaford. We park in the usual place in the woods and make our way down the cliff to the water. The sun hasn’t been up long, and there are still some streaks of orange reflecting off the water, which is black and flat as a stone otherwise. The thought of swimming here alone at this quiet time adds to the chill of the water. I slide in and kick my way deeper, taking measured breaths.
Jesse and I swim around each other, just swim, like we’re here for the exercise. He’s as strong a swimmer as I am, which is saying something, but he can’t lap me as we follow the curve of the quarry wall. Big rocks jut out of the water here and there like dinosaur backs, and I dodge them before climbing onto one of the ledges to catch my breath, grinning as he swims up.
He pulls himself up next to me, streaming water. “Hungry?”
“Starved.” I watch as he follows the path up to the truck and comes back a couple minutes later with a plastic bag. He’s got muffins and little bottles of orange juice. I’ve never known a boy to think of bringing food anywhere; I blink, taking a muffin. “Did you make these?”
“Yeah. Started baking around three this morning.” He breaks up laughing at my expression. “Bought them yesterday.” He takes a bite. “Still good, though.”
We eat for a minute, looking at the water. I give a shudder. “Almost looks dead, doesn’t it?” I giggle awkwardly. “Sorry. Don’t know why I said that.”
“No, I know what you mean. Something weird about water tha
t doesn’t move. Give me the ocean any day, someplace with a tide.” He swallows. “Think of all the junk that’s ended up down there on the bottom over the years. Like that quarry in Hallowell. You read about that?” I shake my head. “Some company drained the Hallowell quarry a few years ago because they decided to start mining the granite again. People had been swimming there for like eighty years, like they have been here. I guess they found a ton of crap on the bottom. Stuff you wouldn’t believe. Jewelry, unopened cases of beer, car keys. A safe with a hole blowtorched through the side—”
I laugh. “I believe that.”
“So this one guy hears they’re draining the pit and gets an idea. Like thirty years before, dude went for a swim and dropped his brand-new school ring into the water. Searched and searched for it, but the quarry was so deep, there was no getting it back. His mom tore him up one side and down the other. That shizz is expensive.” Jesse spins his bottle cap on the ground. “You believe that guy climbed in and found that goddamned ring? Covered under dirt and junk, about forty feet straight down from where he was swimming that day.”
I feel a different kind of shiver at the thought of the gold ring drifting down, down through the still water, coming to rest on a ledge with a tiny puff of dirt. I look at Jesse and I don’t see him the same as I did before. I didn’t know he thought about things like this. “That’s insane.”
“I know, right? Seriously, that ring should’ve been gone forever. He never should’ve found it.” Jesse shoves his wet hair back from his brow. “I dunno, life’s weird. Think something’s over, think again, huh?”
“Yeah. True.” I hug my knees. The sky is brightening, getting bluer, and the water’s surface is getting bluer along with it. “It’d be cool to put something down there on purpose, in case they ever drain this place, you know? Something so people knew we were here.”
“Like a time capsule.” Jesse smiles. “What would you want them to know about you?”
I glance at him, quick. The question gets my back up. What does he expect me to say? He’s prying into places I’m not sure I want him looking, so I strike a bombshell pose, leaning back on my hands. “What do you think?”
He stares for a second, then goes in for a kiss, and pretty soon I’ve got the granite against my back, towel under my head, his wet warm skin under my fingertips as I pull and stroke the muscles of his shoulders. He kisses down to the hollow of my throat, and I unhook my bikini top and feel his lips slide south.
I close my eyes and it’s good, what’s happening, but the darkness behind my eyelids reminds me of this same sky at night, with bursts of colored lights against it. Smells of smoke and burnt sugar and weed, sounds of voices, laughter—everybody’s right over there, too damn close for this—and I stiffen, my thighs tensing in memory. I open my eyes and it’s Jesse, the one I want, looking a question at me: Stop? I shake my head and kiss him hard to prove I mean it.
Eventually, Jesse ends up being the one to stop us, groaning and sitting back. “We better go. It’s almost six-thirty.” He stands and stretches, not looking at me as I straighten my suit and put on my cover-up. I tuck my towel into my bag, careful to hide the half box of Trojans I put in there this morning.
He takes me home. Wouldn’t want to be seen riding to work together. We don’t kiss when we say good-bye, and now he’s got a distracted thing going on that I don’t understand at all. With a rep like his, you wouldn’t think he’d run so hot and cold.
I go inside. Mom and Mags haven’t been downstairs yet, so I crumple my note and go to my room to get changed.
“You’re up early,” Mom says when she comes down and finds me reading the funny papers. She’s been short with me since Edgecombe, but at least she’s talking to me.
“Yup.” I turn the page. Mags makes herself breakfast, resting her head on her fist as she chews. Good ol’ Mags. I can trust her not to say a word, most of the time.
TWELVE
I’M ON FIRE. By the end of the day on Friday, I’ve moved up to the ninth slot on the board, and Mrs. Wardwell’s laughing out of the other side of her mouth. I’m feeling pretty good—hell, I’m flying—even though I pulled something in my back today and can’t really bend over. That’s okay; after tomorrow I’ll have Sunday to rest before destroying whoever’s in the eighth slot on Monday. Time’s running out: only the west field still needs to be raked, and another harvest will be over. Then back to bad ol’ SAHS for Nell and me. School’s such a crock. Teachers are all burnout cases or worse. I’d drop out if Mags wouldn’t skin me alive. I don’t think Mom would really care as long as I got a full-time job right quick.
When we get home, there’s a ladder leaning against the house. The old yellow paint has been scraped off the clapboards as high as the second-story windows. As Mags parks, Hunt comes around the side of the house, dressed in an old T-shirt and his Husqvarna cap. He raises his hand to us and picks up the ladder, carrying it with him out of sight.
“Your mom must’ve really got under his skin the other night,” Mags says back to Nell, grinning. “He started early.”
I walk over to where Hunt set the ladder down, massaging the pain in my back. “Did you actually take a vacation day?”
He scrapes a gnarly old strip of paint that’s been on our house as long as I can remember. “Half a day.”
“What color’s she going to be now?”
“Well. I been thinking on yellow.”
I grin and watch him work for a bit, poking at bits of old paint in the grass with my toe. “Listen, we’re going to Gaudreau’s to pick up supper. You want anything?”
“I’ll be gone by the time you get back. Thanks.”
“You’ll be sorry. Best fried clams in town.”
“I thought you didn’t eat anything but cereal and Moxie.”
“No. I eat fried stuff, too.”
Mags and I shower, leave a note for Mom telling her we’ll buy her a shrimp basket, and walk to the trailer to get Nell.
We don’t come here much anymore, which is kind of sad, considering it’s a stone’s throw from our back door. We girls used to hang out in the trailer a lot growing up, back when Libby wore her hair cut short and wasn’t so mean. At least I don’t remember her being that way. I remember this one time, she let us use this old Snoopy snow cone maker that belonged to her and Mom when they were kids. It leaked sticky red sugar-water all over the place, but Libby just laughed and let us make a mess.
Mags knocks once and lets us in. Everything looks the same: vinyl dinette set in the kitchen, framed JCPenney portrait of baby Nell on the wall, couch covered with a bedsheet to hide the rips that their old cat Tiger left behind. Libby looks up from her knitting, calls, “Nellie,” without so much as a hello. She has this mitten obsession; she knits them year-round. I guess it soothes her. We’ve all got more pairs than we can use, so she ends up donating a bagful to the Coats for Kids drive each December.
Nell’s bedroom is at the end of the hall, and she waves us down. It’s a crazy mess, as always, makeup and brushes scattered in front of the mirror, dog-eared cosmetology how-to’s crammed onto her bookshelf next to her old Baby-Sitters Club and Boxcar Children books. She’s still got those pink-and-white tissue-paper flowers she made in sixth grade stapled over her bed. Around them, she’s printed out a bunch of James Dean pics and stuck them to her wall in a collage. Some black and white, some color, all different sizes: Jimmy hanging over motorcycle handlebars, walking down a city street in a black overcoat, smirking around a cigarette. I guess Libby decided it was safe for Nell to have a crush on a dead guy. Not much chance of him crawling through her daughter’s window at night.
Nell finishes buttoning a sleeveless pointelle shirt and arches her back, tugging at the fabric. “I got it over to Twice Is Nice. You think it’s too tight in the chest?”
“No, it’s cute.” I reach into the ceramic dish on her dresser and hand her some pearl studs, careful not to touch the comedy-tragedy necklace coiled beside them like an eel. “These. Definitel
y.”
Libby watches us over her glasses as we walk by. “Nell. Bring your phone. And put on a sweater.”
“It’s hot.”
A beat passes. “Go get a sweater.” She sets her needles down. “You can borrow my cardigan with the little pearl buttons.”
Nell brightens. “Okay.” She goes back down the hall while Mags and I stand there, fidgeting. Back when I was eight years old, making jacked-up Snoopy snow cones in the kitchen, I never would’ve guessed I’d feel this uncomfortable here someday.
Libby’s gaze goes to the sitcom on TV. “I want her home by eight thirty.”
Eight thirty? Seriously? For a girl who’s turning nineteen in November? I picture Libby sleeping down the hall from Nell every night, dreaming sweet, smug dreams without even the slightest clue that her baby’s had everything stripped away from her, just everything. It makes me sick, and I snap, “We’re getting supper and coming right back.”
“I heard that one before. Then the three of you disappear until midnight.”
Okay, so that’s never happened. At least, not all three of us. Mags sighs, giving Libby her you bore the crap out of me attitude.
It feels good to be in Mags’s car again with the windows down, free. We pass Mom and honk; her Subaru is back on the road, burning oil and flaking rust. I look in the mirror to watch her pull into the driveway and walk over to see what Hunt’s done so far.
Gaudreau’s is nuts. People know they’re running out of summer. By Labor Day, the shutters will be up on the take-out windows, and the sandwich board will read, Thanks for Another Great Season!
The side door opens, and I recognize a migrant guy from the barrens, wearing an apron and lugging a couple bags of trash to the Dumpster. Mr. Gaudreau must pay under the table for kitchen help. Huh. Some family business. “Order for me, okay?” I hand Mags a ten so she won’t give me crap about not chipping in.
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