Awaken (15 page)

“Well,” I said to her with a watery smile. “We made it.”

“You sure did,” she said. “I’m so glad. And you brought your friends.” She said the word
friends
so it came out sounding like
friendsh
, then leered drunkenly up at Frank. “I’ve never met you before. I can guarantee I’d have remembered
that.
”

“And I you, fair madam,” Frank said, leaning forward to lift the hand in which she wasn’t holding a cup, then lightly kissing it on the knuckles.

“Oh, my,” Farah said, giggling, while Kayla rolled her eyes at Frank’s courtliness. “This party is getting better and better! And I see you came in costumes.” She glanced down at my belt. “I love your whip! It’s cool you respect the occasion. It’s Coffin Night, you know. You guys totally rock … not like
some
people.”

She glanced darkly in the direction of the coffin. There were several girls dancing on top of it, a risky proposition in their stiletto heels, especially considering the coffin was hollow and made only of plywood, sagging under their combined weight.

“We told them to guard it from juniors,” Farah said mournfully, “not
trash
it. Even though it’s not full-size, it took me ’n’ Serena all day to paint it.” She looked back at us. “You’re supposed to write your name on it with these gold pens.” She pulled a metallic marker from the back pocket of her denim mini. “We’re trying to get the signature of everyone in the class. But it hardly matters now. You can’t even see them.”

“Would you like me to go over there and knock those girls’ heads together?” Kayla offered, apparently finding Farah less offensive when she was three sheets to the wind.

“Aw, that’s so sweet of you,” Farah said, touched. Then her gaze seemed to focus and she really looked at Kayla for the first time. “Hey, you’re that girl with the big boobs Serena is so mean to online.” Farah’s eyes became misty with tears. “I don’t know why I’m friends with Serena. You’re super nice, and you look really beautiful in that dress. Oh, my God. Have you seen what the storm is doing to this place? Seth and those guys are over there making fun of it.” She gestured towards the group gathered in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the far side of the room. “But it isn’t funny. My dad is going to lose all the money he invested in this development, and then he’s never going to be able to pay for me to go to college, and I’m not smart or athletic enough to get a scholarship anywhere.”

Farah surprised everyone by throwing her arms around Kayla and beginning to sob into her hair.

“Uh,” Kayla said, startled. “There, there.” She patted Farah on the shoulder. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Yes, it is,” Farah wailed, still clutching Kayla. “I’m going to have to go to Isla Huesos Community College. Then I’ll have to live on this stupid island forever, like my dad. And there isn’t even a Gap, let alone a Sephora.”

After uttering the word
Sephora
, Farah sagged in Kayla’s arms, her eyes closed.

“Farah?” Kayla cried, giving the girl a shake. “Farah? Aw, dammit. Someone let this girl have way too much mystery drink.”

“What do we do?” I asked worriedly, as Frank hurried over to take Farah’s limp body from Kayla. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one seemed to notice that the girlfriend of the party’s host was unconscious.

“I’ll call nine-one-one,” Kayla said, sounding dubious. “But I’m pretty sure an ambulance won’t be able to get out here with that storm surge. Besides, there’s a standing evacuation order for all low-lying areas. Category Two hurricane or higher, it’s considered ‘remain at your own risk.’ First responders aren’t supposed to put themselves in harm’s way for these areas until storm waters recede due to the risk of debris. At least, that’s what my mom told me.”

“Guess it’s a nice cold bucket of water in the face for you then, missy,” Frank said, throwing Farah, fireman-style, over his shoulder.

“Uh,” Kayla said. She had her phone out and was dialing. “That’s not how we do it in this century, Frank. We put overdose victims in recovery position on the floor so they don’t choke on their own vomit, then check their pulse and breathing until the ambulance arrives.”

“What fun is that?” Frank asked, disappointed.

“The bedrooms are that way,” I said, pointing down the hall. “See if you can find an empty one to put her in.”

Frank nodded and stalked off, Farah’s head bobbing along behind him, her bright copper-colored hair swinging like a horse’s tail.

“Busy,” Kayla said, indicating her phone. “If they won’t come, and she doesn’t come around soon, we might have to take her to the hospital ourselves in Patrick’s car. Not that I care about her,” she added hastily. “But unlike the rest of these losers, I don’t consider death a reason to party.”

I looked in the direction she was staring, at the girls who were shimmying on top of the coffin. Suddenly, I realized I recognized two of them. One of them was Farah’s best friend, Serena … SerenaSweetie, she called herself online. The other was a girl named Nicole, who’d complained about the Rector Wreckers — Seth and his friends — vandalizing the house next door to hers during last year’s Coffin Night. She and Serena had begun to dance suggestively with each other, drawing a crowd of excited male admirers.

This was one reason no one had noticed their friend Farah passing out and being carried off to a back bedroom by a six-and-a-half-foot-tall stranger with a six-inch scar down one side of his face. Lucky for Farah, that stranger had nothing but good intentions.

“Yeah,” I said to Kayla. “I know what you mean. Keep trying to reach nine-one-one. I’ll go get Alex and then find you guys so we can get out of here. Coming here may not have been the best idea after all.”

Kayla nodded, then walked swiftly — her phone still pressed to her ear — down the hall in the direction Frank and Farah had disappeared while I turned to go in search of Alex. Who knows? Maybe he’d found something, and the perilous journey out to Reef Key wouldn’t have been a complete waste of time —

“Pierce? Pierce Oliviera?” bellowed an all-too-familiar voice.

P
ierce!” Bryce, Seth’s not-very-bright football-playing friend, was really happy to see me. “Pierce Oliviera!”

He pronounced my last name wrong, but since most people did unless I corrected them, I let it go. With Bryce around, no one could kill me. Bryce had a neck thicker than an ordinary person’s thigh and an IQ about as high as the temperature, but he was a fan of my dad’s, and I was pretty sure he’d object if anyone tried to murder me in front of him.

“Hey, you guys,” Bryce said excitedly, as he dragged me towards the rear of the room. “Look who I found! Zack Oliviera’s daughter. You know, Zack Oliviera, that guy who runs the big oil company?”

“The one that sells all the stuff to the military?” a guy I didn’t know asked.

Seth and his friends had pulled some of the deck furniture inside. Now they were sitting on it so they could watch Cassandra in all her fierce glory, as if the sun loungers and chaises were seats in a theater, and the storm was something being shown on a screen in front of them, in IMAX.

“That’s the one,” Seth said to his friend, with a lazy grin.

Bryce hadn’t been weird or creepy about demanding that I come to the back of the room to say hi to Seth. He’d simply seized my hand and refused to release it, the way an excited puppy would grab the pant leg of a new visitor.

“Come on,” he’d said, when I’d insisted I was leaving. “You can’t come all this way and not even say hi to Seth. He’s gonna be so disappointed. Besides, you hafta come look at the storm. It’s so cool!”

It was at that moment I saw Alex appear at the top of the stairs leading down to the basement. Our gazes met, and he froze, recognizing Bryce.

I had no idea whether or not Bryce was one of the people who’d been present when Alex had been murdered, but I saw my cousin shrink back into the shadows of the stairwell, attempting to conceal the file folder he was holding in his hands. He’d found something in Seth’s dad’s business office … something he didn’t want anyone to see him leaving with.

That’s why I said, in a voice I hoped was loud enough for Alex to hear, “Sure, Bryce. I’ll go say hello to Seth.”

“Great,” Bryce said happily, and he dragged me across the room to where Seth and his friends were sitting.

“How are you doing, Pierce?” Seth asked, rising from the chaise lounge on which he’d been sitting. “Glad you could make it. What’s that thing you’ve got on? A whip? Kinky.”

He leaned down to give me a kiss hello … a kiss hello that didn’t feel any different from any other kiss hello I’d ever received, except that Seth was standing so close that I could smell his scent: freshly applied deodorant and expensive body spray and whatever detergent his mom — or, more likely, housekeeper — used to launder his clothes. It was so different from the way John smelled — of the wood smoke from the fireplace in his room and something else, something distinctly John — that for a second I felt such a wave of longing for John wash over me, I could hardly speak.

Then Seth leaned away, and I couldn’t smell him anymore, and the wave of longing for John was gone. It was strange.

When I glanced behind me, I could see that Alex was gone, as well. I wasn’t sure if he’d made it out of the stairwell and out the front door, or if he’d slunk back down into the basement. Whichever it was, he appeared to have escaped.

“Sorry,” I said to Seth. “I didn’t see you over here.” It was a small lie, but one I hoped he would buy. “But I did talk to Farah. She doesn’t seem to be feeling too well.”

Seth looked puzzled. “What?”

“She’s passed out,” I explained. “My friend had to carry her into one of the other rooms. We’re trying to call an ambulance, but you might want to —”

One of Seth’s friends, and another fellow football player, Cody, burst out laughing.

“An ambulance?” Cody echoed in a scornful tone. “An ambulance’ll never be able to get out here in this weather. Neither will the cops. Why do you think we’re holding the coffin party out here, anyway? Not just so none of those goddamned juniors can find us and jack it. Am I right?”

He turned towards Bryce, and the two of them bumped chests, yelling,
“Wreckers rule!”

Wreckers was not only the name of the Isla Huesos High School mascot, but how Seth referred to his personal crew. His ancestors had been employed as wreckers back when the
Liberty
had sunk.

“Look, don’t worry about Farah,” Seth said to me, while smiling amusedly at his friends’ antics. “She’s a lightweight who’s never been able to hold her liquor. She does this every time we party. She’ll wake up and barf and be out here dancing again in no time. Hey, c’mere, I want to show you something.”

That’s when he took my hand and tried pulling me down onto the chaise beside him.

“Seth,” I said, resisting. “I can’t. We were just leaving —”

“Who’s we?” he asked with a grin. “You and that boyfriend of yours?” He glanced around the room. “I don’t see him anywhere. He’s not
actually
keeping you locked up like your grandma is going around saying, is he?”

“No,” I said, struggling to think of some excuse to get away. “But someone really should keep an eye on Farah.”

“Yeah, if you want a lapful of spew. Believe me, I’ve been there, and it’s not pretty.” With alarming force, he managed to wrestle me onto the lounger. For someone who’d joked about my boyfriend holding me prisoner, he seemed pretty intent on keeping me that way. “Take a look at that. What do you think?”

I had to admit that in front of us stretched a truly amazing scene. It wasn’t only the angrily heaving waves of the usually serene Florida “flats” — water normally so still and calm that paddleboarders could navigate it while standing upright with a six-pack and a dog sitting at their feet.

It was the spectacular breadth of sky visible on three sides from inside the house, clouds towering so high they resembled New York City skyscrapers and were occasionally lit as brightly when lightning crackled through them.

Then there was the spec home’s backyard stretched out beneath us, a raised deck built of sandstone tiles that would have been the color of the beach had Mr. Rector not bulldozed all the beaches in order to build over them. Enclosed by three-foot glass walls so the ocean view wouldn’t be impeded, the spec house’s deck came complete with an outdoor kitchen that included a barbecue, mini-fridge, sink, and built-in picnic table.

The crown jewel of the deck, however, was a kidney-shaped aquamarine swimming pool, with an attached hot tub that featured a waterfall that overflowed into the pool. Unlike the lagoon we’d seen while driving in, the waterfall was still working. Though, according to my mother’s maintenance company, the number one rule when preparing your pool for a hurricane was to switch off its power source, the generator was still operating it, along with the pool’s pump.

There appeared to be something at the bottom of Mr. Rector’s pool. It could have been a double dolphin tile design, to match the one in stained glass on the front door, but it was raining too hard to tell.

“Check it out,” Seth said to me with a grin, pointing at the pool. The generator had kept the pool lights bright, so it was easy to see what happened next …

… which was that a powerful wave crashed against the glass wall around the backyard, surged over it and then across the sandstone, then dumped itself into the pool, filling it with dark, brackish salt water.

I realized then what was at the bottom of the pool: seaweed. Not just seaweed but debris of all kinds, including what looked like pieces of driftwood, coolers from fishing boats that had come loose from their moors, possibly even fish. The entire backyard was flooded. I saw a lobster buoy that had detached from its trap bobbing next to the barbecue. A deck chair floated by. How the lights were even still on with so much salt water corroding the circuits, I didn’t know. But I knew it wouldn’t last long.

All the guys seated around the sliding glass doors hooted appreciatively at the wave, then knocked cups as an impromptu toast to Mother Nature’s wrath.

“That one was
superior
,” Bryce shouted excitedly. “Was that one superior or what, Seth?”

Seth’s gaze remained fastened on the pool, but his smile grew devilish.

“That one was superior,” he said. Then his gaze swung towards me. “What did you think, Pierce? Did you think that one was superior?”

Startled to find myself under such a bright, searching gaze, I struggled to find a reply.
His eyes
, was all I could think.
His eyes look so familiar
….

But I didn’t know anyone with eyes that color. John’s eyes weren’t blue. They were gray, as gray as the diamond hanging around my neck. Or as gray as it normally was, I realized after a quick glance down, when it wasn’t swirling as black as that ocean out there.

No, Seth’s eyes were the same aquamarine as the pool. Or, at least, the same aquamarine as the pool used to be.

His eye color wasn’t what I found familiar. It was something else.

“Yeah,” I said, unable to tear my gaze from his. “That one was superior.” Then I licked my lips. I was thirsty, but after what had happened to Farah, there was nothing I dared to drink. “Do you guys think maybe you should turn off the power down there?”

“Why?” Seth asked, his tone slightly mocking. “You aren’t worried someone might get hurt, are you?”

I felt a private storm surge of my own. What was with this guy? How could so many people have liked him enough to have voted for him for class president? Of course, I had some inside knowledge about him they didn’t have.

Reminding myself of Mr. Liu’s warning to hold on to my own kite strings, I tried to keep my tone even.

“People have already gotten hurt,” I said. I was flirting on the edge of danger, I knew, but I had Bryce to protect me if things got tricky. My diamond wasn’t going to be much use. I didn’t think Seth was a Fury, though someone close by obviously was. No, Seth was just an old-fashioned killer.

Seth raised a blond eyebrow at me. “Really? Who?”

“Farah,” I said. I could tell it wasn’t the answer he’d expected when the other eyebrow lifted to join the first. “She says this storm has cost her dad a lot of money. She probably won’t be able to go to college now.”

Seth tucked his lips into a mock pout. “Aw,” he said. “Poor Farah.”

“She’s not the only one who’s gotten hurt,” I said. I said it softly enough that he had to lean forward to hear me. The music was loud, and another wave had struck, causing the guys around us to cheer. “There’s also Alex.”

He’d glanced away to look at the wave, but when I mentioned Alex, his head whipped back towards me.

“Alex?” He raised his cup to his mouth and took a sip of beer. He wasn’t having anything to do with the punch bowl of mystery drink. “Alex Cabrero? He’s a sweet kid. How’d he get hurt?”

The fact that he was pretending like he didn’t know set off another surge inside me. But I knew I had to keep myself in check.

“You know perfectly well,” I said with a smile. “You and the other Rector Wreckers stuffed him into a coffin the other night, then left him there to die.”