Arrows (9 page)

“Do you guys have plans after?” Her question seemed rehearsed.

I could feel her gaze on me as I held the door for them, standing well out of the way. Definitely no eye contact as she passed. The fact that she smelled so good? Well. Nothing I could do about that.

“I might go to Dmitri’s and do some homework,” Danny said. He was acting weird, stiff-walking, his chest sticking out. “Why, what’s up?”

“Oh, nothing. I might have some free time later if you want to do something. I miss you.”

Her eyes had shadows under them, like his, her hair in a messy ponytail. Not that I, you know, noticed.

Danny sighed. “I’m pretty beat. I got this fishing thing now. A bunch of homework.”

Karma waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it.” She smiled, shaking her head. “Nell woke up twice last night, little turd. I barely slept.”

“Tell me about it,” Danny said. “I was at the party until three.”

“Did you have fun?”

“We can skip fishing if you guys want to hang out,” I said. Danny blinked, gaze all shifty.

“We better get to the lake,” he said.

“Yeah, okay.” Karma’s voice was soft. She seemed to be trying really hard not to let the conversation—or the Jen thing last night—bother her. “See you around.”

She waved and the bracelet on her arm slid down, simple beads with Nell’s initial dangling in gold.

His truck reeked of smoke. I’d barely shut the door when he blasted out of the school parking lot, hip-hop rattling on the speakers. We almost died on the way there. Twice. Apparently he wanted to prove he was the world’s worst driver with the world’s worst sound system. I sat without taking off my seat belt or talking when we arrived. Ahead of us the water was sparkling in the sun, really bright.

“Grab the bait,” Danny said, two poles in hand, marching to the aluminum boat that lay on the bank. He wasn’t treating me like a coach.

“Bait?” I slammed the door.

“The bucket.”

The breeze felt good, like it might help me think straight. A jagged row of old, tall pine trees reflected along the back of the lake, blue sky and clouds on the rest. Peaceful. The opposite of what I was feeling. I gripped the metal handle.

Danny flipped the boat by himself. “Pick up that side.”

Sand scraped the bottom and then water churned as the boat cut through the lake’s surface. I jumped in and grabbed the edges as he rowed toward a patch of lily pads, feeling like I should be more relaxed. More focused. We were alone, stuck on a boat, and fishing was going to take some time.

Danny spit into the lake. Within seconds, the white spot disappeared.

“Was that a fish?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“Wow.” I sighed and picked up one of the fishing rods, holding it out. Phoebe would have hated the lake. Not enough going on. “So. Long night at the shack?”

Danny wiped his face with his arm, hesitating with the oars skimming the surface. “You missed a good time.” He grinned and dug in the oars. “We went skinny-dipping.”

“What’s skinny-dipping?”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I…uh, never mind.”

“Chicks getting naked, man.”

The water danced. “And then what?” I asked.

“Nothing, really. Everyone was wasted. Good time, though.”

“Just so you know, I never meant to sound interested in your girl.”

“Hey, man, it’s cool. I’m used to guys checking her out. Doesn’t really bother me.”

“It’s just that—I had a girl like her once.” I rested my arm across my knee. I was thinking of Phoebe. “Yeah, my girl was special, but we were young, too young, probably. Losing her was the biggest mistake of my life.” I hadn’t even said goodbye.

We’d stopped in the water, the boat sounding hollow as he placed the oars along the bottom. “You’re still pretty young,” he said.

“Yeah, I know, but I’m just saying—you can’t let a girl like that get away.” I cringed at how corny I sounded. What I wouldn’t give now for an arrow, the right arrow. Shoot him and be done with it. My face felt hot.

“She’s probably not too happy with me today,” he said.

“Oh? She seemed okay.”

“She’s always on my case, man, thinking I hide shit. It’s like I can’t breathe without running it by her first.”

“My girl was like that, too.” She was nothing like that. Sometimes I wondered if Phoebe had liked me as much as I liked her. If she’d planned her days around me the way I did her.

Danny stared at the water. “Yeah.” He grunted. “We’ll see how college goes.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to Central Louisiana State University in the fall. I got a scholarship.”

I tried to act cool, which equated to me sitting up with too-wide eyes. “What about Karma?”

“I think she’s planning to go to Wist. I don’t know.”

“Wist?”

“This stuck-up art school in New York.”

“Oh, you’ll be long-distance, then.” I almost added,
right?
“But, uh, what about Nell? Won’t it be hard to live that far away?”

“Look, man, this really isn’t your problem.”

The understatement of the millennium. He handed me a small gray bait fish. I slid the hook through its head, like he had. Any thought of them staying together seemed far from his mind.

“I guess I thought you two were close to getting married or something.”

“Married?” Danny wound the line until a tiny steel knob drew up to the tip. “We’re seniors! Are you serious?”

I shrugged, the end of my line jangling. “You guys seem good together.”

He flicked his fishing pole. The string settled slowly over the water. “I don’t want to get married for a long time.”

I’d begun to sweat. “Why not?”

“Just forget it, man.”

“If you don’t want to marry her…and you’re going to Louisiana…then why are you together?” Marry her, all right? Get obsessed with her. She seemed pretty awesome, but what did I know? The brightness of the lake annoyed me.

“She’s my girl, man. We have a kid together.” He began to circle the lever on his reel. “If things go bad between us, believe me, child support would be a real drag.” He frowned and threw the hook out a second time, a zipping sound.

“Okay—wait, what’s child support?”

Danny scoffed. When he noticed I was serious, he frowned. “The government making me pay to support Nell, way more than I already do. The percentages are insane.”

“Okay, so you
should
get married, then. Avoid all that.” My hands were extended, palms up.

He made a face. “Are you gonna cast?”

Child support savings, the occasional ass grab—his perfect relationship? “Cast?” I said.

He wagged his hands, as if that helped. I stared at the contraption before me. An image of me cracking the reel into pieces flashed in my head.

I stood and copied what Danny had done, hard, but when I flicked my hands, the pole went flying and landed into the lake with a loud
dunk.
Ripples spread from the spot. I stood, and with a grunt, I jumped into the lake. For a second, the water felt good, really good, and then Danny started to yell.

“Hey! What the hell are you doing?”

All I had to do was grab the fishing pole.

I hadn’t expected the water to be so cold. I hadn’t expected to begin sinking. I wasn’t a god anymore, and that day in the lake I faced the reality that
I could die,
right there, before getting Phoebe or Karma or myself out of this mess.

With him watching.

I didn’t know how to swim, but I could claw, and kick, and try to save myself. Foam sped toward the surface, dark water all around me. Thrashing. Twisting. Nothing helped.

The sound of Danny jumping in should have been a relief, but I didn’t want him to be the one to save me. He grabbed my shirt.

We burst through the surface.

“I’m fine,” I said. Coughing, snorting, I tried to act cool.

“Grab the life vest, man.” Water sprayed in my eyes when he threw it. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t say thank you, I owe you one, nothing. I couldn’t stop feeling angry, this proud anger I wasn’t even sure why I felt.

He shook his head. “That was an expensive pole, too. You got three hundred bucks?”

I clambered into the boat, breathing hard. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your money.”

He’d saved my life. Pretty sure my dignity was somewhere in the lake, not just his overpriced pole. And the truth about what my arrow had done? I was practically drowning in it. He didn’t want Karma. He didn’t want to be a dad. He just wanted to be what he already was—a teenager with no responsibilities. The kind of guy who went skinny-dipping without a second thought.

It was a sad story. For Karma to love someone that much—and work that hard—for nothing.

I ripped my soaked T-shirt over my head and wrung it out. The water had a slight mineral scent. Two more truths. One: he didn’t deserve her.

The second truth was a lot harder to admit, since there was no hope with her being under the arrow’s spell. Danny was her everything, except what she deserved.

An eagle with a white tail and head and a black body coasted from a pine across the water’s surface. I watched it as dread filled me.

She deserved to be loved.

“So…you and Danny talked about everything, then?”

The moment Jen spoke, I could have sliced the tension between us with one of the butter knives she was wrapping with paper napkins at work. We hadn’t discussed Danny’s scholarship at school. We hadn’t discussed Thursday’s party. Yet here we were, Saturday morning at Country Café, me waiting for Danny’s to-go order, her with a heaping basket of silverware. How much longer could a double cheeseburger take?

“Yes,” I said. “We talked.” I meandered over to the bulletin board where locals stuck copies of their business cards, reading each one.

“I’m really sorry about…” Jen trailed off. Wrap, wrap, wrap.

“About what?”

I turned to stare at her. She had these full lips—pretty, I guess, but they were dry and ugly-looking when she pursed them like that.

“Sorry about everything,” Jen continued. “Wist. Plans changing.” Her brown ponytail bobbed with each word. “I really thought you were going to do it this time. You know, go to New York.”

This time.

Her little jabs about my past weren’t going unnoticed.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” I said carefully. I hugged the sweatshirt I was wearing. “I’ve decided to go to school near Louisiana. I found a really good school.” The parts I left out: an okay school; a school nearby, as in Mississippi, two and a half hours from Danny’s campus. “Who knows what the future will bring? Maybe we’ll all go to New York in a year or two.”

Her expression was smooth, no reaction to my words. “I thought you’d be pissed.”

The café was empty and suddenly too big and convenient for the topic. She grabbed a handful of silverware, the metal dinging sharply.

“I know
I’d
be pissed if my baby’s father enrolled in a school ten states away without talking to me about it.”

“He got a big scholarship,” I mumbled.

Her mouth parted slightly, a fork in one hand, napkin in the other.

“Is
that
how he put it?”

Her words seemed to stab me. I hated that once again, she was acting as if she knew a secret, my boyfriend’s secret, some members-only club I hadn’t joined.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said quickly.

“Jen…”

“Seriously, it’s nothing. You worry too much.” She made a snapping sound with her tongue and something in me snapped, too.

I faced her with a pounding heart. “Yeah, well, maybe I should worry. Maybe I
should
worry that you’re talking to my boyfriend and going to parties with my boyfriend when it’s obvious you’re not my friend.” I towered over her, my fingertips supporting me on the vinyl countertop. I tried to breathe normally. I hated her lips.

“Danny wanted me to go. I can’t control what he says.”

“I thought Aaryn invited you.”

“Who?” She fit her mouth around the straw in her water glass and took a long pull. “Oh. Him. Yeah, he was there, but we asked him to come along. Not the other way around.”

I stood there for a long time. The motor for the pie display whirred, one piece of apple the only slice left. The chair grated as Jen got up and walked to the bathroom. The door closed with a gentle click.

Follow her. Don’t let her make you feel small.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t cross the line she’d drawn, even if it meant knowing.

To know felt like the worst thing ever, and things between me and Danny were okay again. Barely okay. I guess he’d acted a little weird when I told him about the Mississippi idea. I smiled shakily as the cook handed me a to-go container and paid for the burger, my hands trembling.

Is
that
how he put it?

I burst through the door of the restaurant with a snap. Shoved the burger on the passenger seat of my car and slammed the door. The crash of the river was like static in my ears. Lakefield Dam was at the bottom of the hill behind the café, inviting me to escape. I walked toward it with heavy steps, unzipping my sweatshirt as if freeing shackles, following the sound, feeling dizzy. My eyes watered from the sunlight. They stung. I could leave Jen’s words at the river, pushing them out and down and gone.