Barefoot Girls (58 page)

Clay released her arm and put his hands up. Evidently, he’d heard all about Rose’s father.

Rose looked down at her arm and brushed it off. “Good. Now leave me alone. I’ve wasted enough time on you.” She raised her nose up in the air and turned away, heading for her friends.

At that moment, Michael appeared in the door, unsteady on his feet. It only took a moment for Zooey to realize he’d been drinking heavily. He stood between Rose’s two friends, teetering as if on a rolling ship’s deck, his eyes unfocused, his mouth slack. Then his eyes narrowed, focusing on the crowd around Keeley and Shannon.

Rose, seeing him in the doorway, threw her shoulders back and smiled brightly. “Michael! Oh, I’m so happy to see you!” She crossed the floor in three steps and stood in front of him, hands clasped together as if in prayer. Then, seeing the state he was in, she faltered. “Michael? Are you okay?”

“Scuse, me, Rose. Sweetheart. I gotta see about something.” Barely glancing at her, he stepped around her. As he did, he tried to pat her arm in passing and missed, patting the air. He didn’t notice his lack of connection, purely focused on getting across the room to his girlfriend. He paused outside the wall of guys, stretching his neck to see what was going on. Then he started his removal process, pushing every boy out of the way until he was in the center and standing next to Keeley, who was squatting on the floor, the two girls wiggling and bumping their rear ends together to the music on the radio, now “Wishing Well” by Terence Trent D’Arby.

Giving a bellow that made the air seem to shake, he reached for Keeley, grabbed her by her arm and dragged her to her feet. Then he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, so that her head dangled down near his waist, her long hair dragging on the floor. She shrieked, and then, perhaps due to the vast amount of tequila she’d consumed combined with being flipped upside down, she vomited, a huge yellow splatter hitting the back of Michael’s khaki’s and feet as well as the wooden floor below.

“Ew!” Shannon screamed, scuttling backward like a crab from the mess, her skirt riding up so far Zooey could see her pink thong underwear. All the boys stepped back as well, some putting their hands over their mouths in revulsion.

Keeley started crying and screaming hysterically, but Michael either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He carried her out of the room, all of the kids parting quickly to get out of the way. Rose was watching the whole thing with an upside-down smile of disgust, and she covered her mouth with both hands when the two passed, smelling of tequila and vomit.

“Holy crap!” Amy said.

“We’ve got to make sure she’s all right!” Pam said.

“It’s Michael,” Zooey said. “Of course she’s all right. He’ll take care of her.”

“But…“ Pam said, spinning around to look out the window nearby that faced the front yard which was crowded with reveling teenagers and young adults.

Amy patted Pam’s shoulder. “Zo’s right. Michael will take care of her. Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t tell me what to worry about,” Pam said, shrugging off Amy’s hand.

But Zooey wasn’t so sure, now that she thought about it. Michael looked as drunk as Keeley, if not more so. The blind leading the blind: that was what was really going on. What if something happened to them? But she wanted to check on her own. She was tired of dealing with Amy and Pam, who’d been bickering constantly lately.

“Hey, you guys?” Zooey said. The two girls looked over at her. “I don’t feel so good. Maybe it’s the smell in here. Anyway, I think I’m going to go home. I’m tired.” She said a little prayer of thanks for all of the other parties and late nights when she’d left early over the last two weeks, desperate to get home and be alone with her father’s photo and her grief, tired of smiling and pretending everything was the same.

As expected, they nodded complacently. “Sure,” Pam said. “See you early? I want to go over to Jones and watch the surfers.”

Zooey knew exactly which surfer she was referring to: Clay. Now it was open-season and Pam wanted to be first in line, ignoring the fact that he had never shown an interest in her. This was her pattern: ignore the interested boys who were typically thick beefy guys who appreciated her fuller figure and warm-hearted ways and go after the lean handsome too-cool surfers who were interested in girls like Rose.

Not wanting to get in an argument that might slow her down, she nodded. “Okay. See you guys tomorrow. Meet at your place?”

Clay and Shannon were standing in the middle of the living room having a loud argument about who was going to clean up the mess and the smell was starting to become overwhelming. Continuing their conversation and following the rest of the exiting crowd that wanted to get away from the mess and the arguing siblings, the girls drifted out of the house and onto the front yard where the majority of the kids were hanging out around a small bonfire that had been built in the sand. Beyond the boardwalk on the small beach beside the dock some boys were roughhousing while a few girls huddled together nearby and looked on, holding their plastic cups of quickly warming beer. Michael and Keeley were nowhere to be seen.

Zooey said goodbye and headed off toward her house, hoping to run into them. She walked slowly up the boardwalk, listening. The loud chorus of crickets made it hard to hear anything, especially as she entered what everyone called “the tunnel” – a section of the boardwalk enclosed on all sides by overarching trees. All she heard was the occasional shout behind her from the party at Clay’s, which weakened to ghostly echoes in the distance as she got farther away.

She paused when she reached Pam’s house, which was dark. Should she sneak in and check to see if Keeley was there? Was it really Keeley she was checking on? She continued walking, the light from the causeway’s streetlights barely touching the darkness, only lightly outlining shapes, glinting off the small waves in the bay that lapped on the shore beside the boardwalk. She wouldn’t find them. She could feel it. They were inside somewhere, making up, arms wrapped around each other.

Then she turned her head and Michael was sitting a few feet away on a dock, feet dangling in the water, rubbing his head with one hand. She stopped.

“Michael?”

He turned, looked into the darkness. “Who’s there?”

She stepped closer. “It’s Zooey. Zo.” She still felt strange calling herself that, this nickname that Keeley had given her years before and that everyone on Captain’s had adopted. She didn’t see herself as a nickname sort of person.

“Hey. What are you doing?” Michael asked, his voice dull.

“Going home. Are you okay? Where’s Keeley?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just smarting. My ear feels funny, like it’s loose or something. Keeley’s fine. She went home.”

“Home-home?”

“I mean, Pam’s house.”

Zooey walked over and stood next to him. He was still rubbing his head in a dazed way. “What’s wrong with your ear?”

Michael sighed and shook his head a little. “I shouldn’t have picked her up like that. Scared the crap out of her.”

“And the barf.”

“Don’t remind me. Look at my khakis. Had to wade around in the water for a while to get rid of it. It was making me sick.”

“But, what about your ear?”

“Keeley. When I got here and put her down, she hauled off and decked me. Man, I didn’t know she had it in her. She really whaled on my ear. I just wanted to get her away from all that back there. That’s all I wanted.” He shrugged and shook his head. Zooey wanted to hug him, he sounded so young, so confused.

She reached down and touched his shoulder. “She was just scared. You know about her.”

He shook his head, more slowly this time. “No, it’s more. We’re done. She told me she hates me. That she never loved me. It was all an act.”

Zooey gasped, and then said, “No. No, she didn’t mean that. She’s drunk, that’s all. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

Michael finally looked at her straight-on and Zooey saw something black on the other side of his head, a line, like dripping ink, running down his neck. He said, “I’m drunk and I didn’t say anything like that. No, she meant it.”

“What is that? Is that blood?”

He sluggishly reached up and rubbed his neck, smearing the dark line. “Just a little.”

“Oh!” She involuntarily reached toward him before pulling her hand back. “You’ve got to have that looked at. Do you want to come to my house? I’ve got a first aid kit. At least we can clean it up?”

“No, I’ll be fine. She just got my ear at a weird angle.”

“No, really. I insist. It could get infected.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“I’m serious!” she shouted and then covered her mouth with surprise.

He looked up at her, blinking. “Okay, okay. Damn.”

He’d seemed almost sober sitting on the dock, but once he stood up and they were walking toward Zooey’s house, it became apparent that he was very drunk. He leaned on her heavily as they walked, causing her to stumble over and over, both of them nearly falling several times before making it to the safety of her house. She had him lay down on the couch with his head on a rolled up beach towel while she ran upstairs to get the first aid kit, her flashlight’s beam jumping around the storage closet for five minutes before she found it.

When she got back downstairs, he was asleep and didn’t rouse, even when her flashlight’s beam shined on his face. Using a washcloth she’d wetted at the kitchen sink, she gently washed his bloody neck, now drying and crusted, and then patted his ear with it. Whatever cut was there, it had closed up.

She sat for a while with the first aid kit in her lap and the flashlight’s beam making a pale circle on the far wall, and just looked at Michael sleeping. How many times she had wanted to just stare at him like this. He was beautiful, really: his strong jaw, his perfectly shaped mouth, his high cheekbones and thick eyebrows.

She wanted to kiss him. Just once. He’d never know, he was so drunk. Just wanted to feel those lips on hers for a second. Keeley could have him back tomorrow, would have him with only a soft apology, appealing tip-tilted eyes gazing up at his with sorrow. This was all that Zooey would have, a stolen kiss she didn’t deserve but wanted, needed, so terribly.

She leaned down and her lips touched his and they were soft warm velvet. Then, they were moving, responding to her, kissing her back. She wanted to pull away, but couldn’t bring herself to stop; it was so delicious, so good. His mouth opened, his tongue touched hers, searching. His arms came up from behind her and he was pulling her to him.

Then they were rolling on the couch and it was like a tidal wave, massive, this craving for him. She let her hands go everywhere and felt his responding in kind. Did he know it was her? Did she care? He was on top of her now, his kisses deep, feeding on her. When he started pulling up her skirt, she didn’t stop him, wouldn’t. Then, he was on top of her, pounding, and she was gasping in his ear. This closeness, there was nothing like it. He was part of her, and the pain, it was part of that rawness, realness between them.

It went on forever, but when it ended, him shuddering and crying out, it felt too soon. She wasn’t ready to let go. But he was pulling away, his face at first happy and rosy like a baby’s, before shock bleached it white in the dark living room as he looked down at her.

Zo forced herself to look up from the cold sugar-filled cup of coffee she’d been staring into where it was propped in her hands, and into Hannah’s eyes, waiting for the accusation there.

Hannah’s eyes were only gentle, sad.

Zo said, “It wasn’t until I got to Pam’s the next morning when I found out what had happened. Some time that night, after he ran out of my living room, Michael had taken his family’s boat, crossed the channel, and gotten behind the wheel of his family’s station wagon. The car was on fire when they found it, flipped over, five miles down the road. There were no witnesses. He died in the fire, pinned behind the wheel.”

Chapter 63

“None of us saw the wreckage, his body,” Zooey said. “That had to be part of it, how unreal it all felt. It was like being in a dream world, everything off-kilter. His perpetually friendly parents barely spoke to anyone. Just left the island, their house still open, things left as they were when the police arrived at their door early that morning. They left their boat tied up at the community dock and a neighbor had to move it and lock it up for them. Keeley was the only person to speak to Michael’s mother, arriving at their house to confront Michael when they were getting in the boat to leave with the police.”

She took the cold cup of untouched coffee she’d been holding and put it on the table. She didn’t want to tell this part. She wanted Keeley here, who could talk about it cleanly, without guilt. Of course, Keeley had blamed herself back then. Back before she knew the whole story, Keeley had assigned herself the starring role as the murderer of Michael Ferguson.

Zo looked at Hannah. So much like Michael, those lips, that dark thick hair and lush eyebrows. Her curvaceous figure had to have come from Michael’s side. It certainly didn’t come from Zo’s genetic background. “I had to force myself down, my guilt battling with my common sense. I knew I couldn’t say anything to anyone. If I felt separate from everyone before, now I felt positively alien. I was a killer: first my father, now Michael.”