Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic (Summer) (29 page)

“Nothing. I don’t want anything from you,” she said.

“Yeah? Then why are you here?”

“I just wanted to tell you I can’t believe you’re seeing Lianne.”

“Why is it any of your business?”

“I have a right to have an opinion,” Marquez said. “And that’s my opinion. It’s a free country.”

J.T. sighed. “What is it with you? You dump me, but then you can’t handle it when I start seeing someone else? What’s that about?”

“Like I said, I can’t believe you’re going with Lianne, that’s all. She’s only the witch of the universe. You know what she did to try to hang on to Seth? Did you hear about that? How she tried to make Summer think she was sleeping with Seth? That’s the kind of girl you want to go out with?”

To Marquez’s surprise, J.T. nodded. “Yes,” he said with perfect seriousness. “Maybe it is. So she went too far, trying to hold on to a relationship she cared about. At least she
did
care. At least she tried. Unlike some people who walk away as soon as things get a little difficult. Maybe that seems like a pretty good thing to me right now. I’d like to know what it’s like to have a girlfriend who cares enough to fight for me.”

The remark stung Marquez, and she struck back, harder than she’d intended. “Did you tell her all about your little fantasy that your parents aren’t your real parents? Did you tell her all about how nuts you went?”

“Yes, I did,” J.T. said softly. “I told her all of it. I told her it made me feel lost and confused. That I loved my parents, but I was worried about what it meant that I didn’t have a birth certificate or adoption papers.”

“You
told
her?”

“Yeah. And you know what? She didn’t run for the nearest exit. Unlike certain people. She didn’t just blow me off and tell me to get over it. Unlike certain people.”

Marquez could tell him, tell him right now what she suspected about him and Summer and a lost boy named Jonathan. It would probably devastate him. He would be upset. He would feel hurt. Maybe it would serve him right. At this moment, she wanted to hurt him.

And then he would run straight to Lianne, and Lianne would comfort him.

“I’m sure it was a very sweet, tender scene,” Marquez said, sneering as contemptuously as she could manage. But it wasn’t very convincing. She suddenly realized she felt an ache inside her chest. She felt hollow. Empty. The cold of the walk-in seemed very noticeable.

J.T. wasn’t just seeing Lianne to spite Marquez. That was a new and disturbing realization.

“It was something new for me,” J.T. said. “I felt bad, and she made me feel better. And she told me how bad she felt over Seth, and I guess I made
her
feel better. I understand that’s what relationships are like.”

“But you’re not…serious or anything,” Marquez said. “Not about
Lianne
?”

He shook his head, almost pityingly. “I have work to do.”

I don’t really have much time to do this, Jen, but I wanted to get in one last message before I post this. I just played back the part of the video with Seth and me on it. He’s usually more serious than he was being there.

Tomorrow morning Seth and I are going on a diving trip, now that I’m an official scuba diver, over to this island called Geiger Key. No one lives there, but the diving is supposed to be really cool. They have a sunken freighter and all these caves that are full of fish and stuff, and Seth says the tourists don’t go there much.

Listen to me—like
I’m
some kind of local.

Anyway, it’s going to be like an all-day thing. We won’t get back until late. He kind of suggested we could just camp out overnight, but I gave that a big N-O. Last time I stayed overnight somewhere was at Adam’s. Besides, if I said yes, Seth would just think it was a sign I was ready to make some big commitment, which I’m not.

I don’t even know why, Jen, it’s just this feeling I’ve had. I keep having the same dreams about Jonathan. I don’t know why. I never, ever used to dream about him. I think maybe it’s some kind of warning, you know, about losing someone you love. What else could it be?

Okay, yes, I know, it could be that I’m just having dreams and no big deal. Or else I’m eating pizza before I go to bed and it’s giving me nightmares. Only they aren’t nightmares. They’re tied up somehow with being down here. I don’t know, forget it, I’m babbling.

I have no time to babble. I have to get ready for this trip tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to it.

At least, I think I am. I really love diving now. And I really like spending time with Seth. Maybe that’s the problem: I like spending time with him too much. Oh well, things could be worse.

And look, look at this—tan line. Definite tan line. That puts my Florida tan ahead of your California tan, I believe. Anyway…I have to get to bed early, be rested and all. Long day tomorrow. And I’m really looking forward to it.

What I’m not looking forward to is falling asleep tonight and having that dream again.

It was a two-hour trip by boat, flying along over the light chop, skipping from wave to wave almost as fast as by car. Ten minutes into the trip Summer had felt a little seasick from the constant up-and-down movement, the series of small and large shocks, but then, after a while, her body adjusted. She managed not to hurl, which she considered a major accomplishment.

Seth had borrowed the boat from a friend. It was not as sleek as Adam’s boat, but it felt safe enough and was as fast as Summer could stand.

The morning had started gray and overcast with fog that had hidden the sun and turned the water dark and threatening. But by nine in the morning the fog had burned away, and soon after, the clouds blew away to the west. Now, as they neared the small, low island, the sun was at full midmorning intensity, climbing the blue sky, turning the water green and translucent, like an antique glass bottle.

“There it is, Geiger Key,” Seth yelled over the roar of the engines. “Either that or I’ve gone too far and it’s Cuba. In which case we can go visit Marquez’s relatives.” He throttled down, reducing speed.

“I don’t see any other boats,” Summer said, scanning with a hand over her eyes to block the sun. The island was little more than a stretch of beach some quarter-mile long, a boomerang-shaped sandbar with a decorative fringe of palm trees and some low bushes clumped around incongruous outcroppings of rock. It looked as if a few good waves could wash it away permanently. “Not much to it, is there?” Summer said. “I mean, somehow you expect to see some waterfront condos or a Marriott.”

“It’s not what’s above the water that counts, it’s what’s down below,” Seth said. He reduced speed still further, letting the boat creep along the shoreline, close enough to the beach so that Summer could have easily swum ashore. The sand was pure white and smooth—no human footprints, no tire tracks, just the tiny three-toed prints of shore birds.

A dozen or so tiny sanderlings scurried busily along the wet sand, evading the lapping edge of the surf. A snow-white egret stood nearby, looking superior and a little stupid on its tall, toothpick legs.

“How do you know when we’re in the right spot?” Summer wondered.

“See that big palm there? And that rocky outcropping there? I just line them up. Nothing to it, once you know where to look.”

Seth looked confident, but the isolation of the little island, in the middle of what looked like a million square miles of trackless Gulf water, was a little intimidating to Summer. They hadn’t seen another boat in the last half hour. And with the constant roar of the boat’s engines suddenly gone, it seemed to Summer that the world was vast and empty around them. Endless blue sky above, broken only by a few cotton ball clouds far off, the endless blue-green sea around them, and nothing to cling to in all that emptiness but this minuscule boat and a scarcely larger island.

“Quiet, isn’t it?” Seth whispered, grinning, as if he’d read her mind.

“It does kind of make you want to whisper, like being in a huge museum or church or something.”

“So, ready to suit up?” He climbed up onto the bow, freed the anchor, and threw it over the side.

“I guess so,” Summer said, still oppressed by the isolation.

“Okay, we have to pace ourselves, stay down a little while, then take a break before we go down again. I thought maybe we’d have a picnic lunch on the beach after we work up an appetite. Eat those sandwiches you made.”

“Cool,” Summer said, trying to sound as nonchalant as he.

Since her first dive, Summer had grown competent at the ritual of suiting up—sliding into the tight rubber jacket, adjusting it to eliminate uncomfortable binding, carefully seating the straps of her tank, automatically checking her air hose and regulator, even spitting into her face mask like a professional.

Seth double-checked every step, watching over her protectively.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready.”

“Okay, now remember, keep clear of any sharp edges. There’s rusted steel down there, and you don’t want to slice your air hose. If you do and I’m right there, we’ll buddy breathe, right? Otherwise, make an ascent with the air you have. Just remember—”

“Never rise faster than the smallest bubble,” Summer said. “I’ll be good.”

“And of course, look out for old Stinker,” Seth said.

“Who—what—?”

“Oh, he’s the great white shark who hangs around here. Huge.” Seth spread his hands as far as they would go. “He’s got a mouth wider than this. They say he got fat on the bodies of all the guys who went down with the freighter, and he’s never lost his taste for human flesh.”

Summer turned pale.

“I’m kidding,” Seth said, terribly amused by his joke. “Kidding. Just a little diving humor.”

To show him he hadn’t scared her, Summer calmly sat down on the side of the boat, pulled down her mask, and rolled backward into the sea. Once under, she took a quick survey, just in case Seth hadn’t really been joking. There were no sharks, as far as she could see.

There was a depth-charge explosion as Seth dropped into the water above her. He paddled down and took a slow inspection tour around her, checking her gear one more time. Then, with a “follow me” wave, he was off.

Summer twisted to point in the same direction, then gave several hard kicks to catch up.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a blizzard swirled around her, a tornado of tiny silver-and-black fish that sparkled like diamonds in the flickering shafts of sunlight and blocked her view of Seth. In her various practice dives, Summer had never seen more than a few distant fish and, once, a graceful stingray. Now it was if she had been invited to join the school of fish as it darted left and right, seemingly all of one mind, then shot forward, following some unknowable logic.

Just as suddenly as it had come, the blizzard of fish blew away and there was Seth, wiggling his eyebrows, an expression that Summer translated as “wasn’t that cool?” She nodded.

The wreck of the freighter was scarcely recognizable at first. It looked more like a natural phenomenon, a rusted, shell-encrusted, half-buried reef shaggily adorned with waving seaweed.

But as they got closer, Summer could see the distinctive outlines of a large ship lying on its side, the superstructure mostly buried, the hull still rising from the sea bed.

It was this strange, out-of-place work of man that made Summer feel most alien. She was flying far above it, hovering over it like an ungainly, slow-motion bird. She felt a passing moment of giddiness, a fear of heights, as if she might at any moment lose the buoyancy of the water and fall the twenty or thirty feet to the dead ship.

Seth led the way down, gliding through the separate beams of milky sunlight, one moment dark, the next bright. Summer kept close to him, oppressed by the sense of distant tragedy. Had people died here, going down with this ship?

Summer and Seth skimmed above the ship’s crusty flank, inches above the hull, like airplanes buzzing a landing field. She touched the ship, surprised at the sensation—it was hard and real and substantial. She glanced ahead and saw that Seth was standing upright, using his hands to keep his balance. He waved for her to come.

He was standing beside a huge, jagged tear in the ship’s side. The death wound, Summer had no doubt. She looked down into the darkness of the ship. And then, from the dark gash a pop-eyed face appeared, a large fish that looked for all the world like a grumpy old man who’d been awakened from his nap. It floated out and past them, nearly three feet long and in no hurry at all.

Summer gazed around more closely, looking less at the wreck of the ship and more at all the living things on or around or within it. Tiny shells clustered on the hull, each a living creature; the octopus that scuttled along, a liquid flurry of graceful motion; the amazing snail that crept toward her foot. There were small forests of soft, willowy plants that made a home for crabs and squid and rays. Fish, big and small, alone or in schools, darted in and out, up and down, crossing between her and the sun above like flights of birds.

In a single moment of awareness she realized that the dead ship was no longer dead. The machine that had failed to protect its human cargo now protected an entire universe of colorful, indescribably strange, stunningly creative, incredible life.

A moment ago she had been sad, seeing only a wreck. Now she smiled—as well as she could with a regulator in her mouth—and felt a surge of happiness. It was a new, unexpected sort of happiness, a satisfied feeling that had nothing directly to do with her own wants and desires. It was funny, really, Summer thought, the way she got caught up in her own minuscule fears and worries, her own tiny plans, as if she were the star in the big story of the universe.

Just like the people on this ship who had probably seen nothing but tragedy when it sank, perhaps the confirmation of their own minuscule fears and the end of their own tiny plans. Those people had not been the whole story, either. A much bigger story was being told.

Summer laughed an explosion of bubbles. And then, for some reason that she could not possibly have explained in words, she swam over to Seth. She caught his hands in hers and drew him into a swirling, giddy dance that went round and round and round, a slow tornado of bubbles and limbs caught in a shaft of sunlight.

“So, aren’t you going to ask me about the trip?” Mallory Olan demanded. She was in the passenger seat of the Mercedes, having said she was just too exhausted to drive after the overnight flight in from the West Coast.

Mallory looked almost nothing like her daughter. She was expensively, if loudly, dressed. Her hair was big and out of a bottle. It was flattened a little in back from leaning against the airline seat.

Diana hated to drive with her mother in the car. It wasn’t that her mother criticized her driving; she rarely did. Rather it was that Diana had to cope with morbid fantasies of running the car into a concrete abutment and killing her mother. It wasn’t exactly a wish, and it wasn’t exactly a fear. But it was distracting.

“How was your trip?” Diana asked.

Mallory began to tell her, in great detail, and after a few minutes Diana forgot her mother was talking. This day was not even supposed to come. At one point Diana had nearly decided that she would be dead on the day her mother returned. She’d played that scene so many times in her mind that it seemed unreal that her mother should now be here, right beside her, chattering away and complaining, and Diana, far from being dead, was being forced to interject semi-interested “uh-huhs” and “hmms.”

Well, maybe that wasn’t
so
far from being dead.

Diana popped in a CD. Saves the Day. She didn’t especially like them. She only had the CD in the car to annoy her mother.

“I can’t wait to see Summer,” Mallory said, shouting over the anarchic music. “I feel bad that I haven’t even seen her for more than a minute since she’s been here. What
is
this music? They’re just screaming.”

“It’s a tender love song,” Diana said, straight-faced.

“Why didn’t Summer come with you to pick me up?”

Diana enjoyed the moment. “Summer is off with a boy she met. I guess they’re going to spend the day scuba diving and nude sunbathing on an uninhabited island. Don’t worry, though. I made sure they packed plenty of sunblock.”

Okay, so the part about nude sunbathing had been a slight embellishment. And who cared about the sunblock?

Unfortunately, Mallory didn’t fall for it. “I’m glad she’s meeting people,” she said.

They arrived at the house, and the housekeeper came out to help with the bags. The phone was ringing as they went inside.

Her mother grabbed it in the hallway, assuming of course it was for her. And it almost certainly was, Diana thought. She was dragging one bag down the hall when she heard her mother say, “Adam! How nice to hear from you. It’s been a long time.”

Diana dropped the bag.

“Yes, I had a fine trip,” Mallory said. “Me, too. Yes, here’s Diana now.” She put her hand over the receiver and in a loud stage whisper called Diana over. “It’s Adam Merrick.” Then she wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Diana took the receiver. Her heart rate had shot up as soon as she’d heard the name Adam.

“Yes?”

His voice was curt, cold, formal. “You wanted a meeting. My father is in town today. Four o’clock this afternoon, at the estate. That is, if you’re still sure you want this.”

He sounded as if he expected her to argue or perhaps to have changed her mind.

“You and Ross, too,” she said. She glanced at her mother, who was looking expectant, as if somehow Diana might be discussing marriage plans with Adam.

“Oh, we’ll be there,” Adam sneered.

Diana hung up the phone.

“So? So, has something been happening while I was away?” Mallory asked.

To Diana’s own amazement, she laughed. Well, it
was
funny. “All sorts of things have happened while you were away,” Diana said.