Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic (Summer) (35 page)

“Ms. Olan, you have one of the richest and most powerful men in America by the…Well, let’s just say you have him,” Wallace said. “You have him good.”

The stilt house seemed almost unbearably pretty. It brought tears to Summer’s eyes. She had thought many times over the past day that she would never see it again.

It didn’t look like much, perhaps. It was a shabby, wooden-sided bungalow built out over the water, raised on tall pilings and connected to the shore by a walkway. Frank the pelican was sitting on the railing, and as they approached he deposited a glob of bird poop on the wood.

“Home, sweet home,” Summer said, laughing. She and Seth were finally alone after a Coast Guard doctor had pronounced them both fit to be released.

They had slipped around the side of the Olan house, hoping to avoid Diana and her mother, Mallory. As far as Summer knew, neither her cousin nor her aunt had heard anything about her misadventure, and she wanted to keep it that way. Aunt Mallory would almost certainly have told Summer’s parents, and they would have yanked her back to Minnesota faster than the speed of light.

Summer didn’t want to leave Crab Claw Key, not yet. Not anytime soon. In fact, she wondered if she’d ever want to leave. Seth was there for the rest of the summer, and J.T. lived there year-round. Two very powerful reasons for her to want to stay.

She had to figure out the truth about J.T. And Seth…She didn’t even want to think about having to leave him when summer ended. She wasn’t going to do anything to hurry that moment.

She squeezed his hand tightly.

They reached the door. Summer went inside. All was how she’d left it. Nothing had changed. The very normalcy of it all seemed odd. It
had
been only a little more than a day, but it felt as if days and weeks and lifetimes had passed. How could her bed still be made? How could there still be the odor of adhesive and paint from the work Seth had done fixing up the house? How could the same posters be on the walls, the same picture of her parents be sitting on the table beside her bed?

“Seems kind of alien, doesn’t it?” Seth said, echoing her thoughts as he joined her.

“A bed. With actual sheets,” Summer said. She went over to it and sat down. It seemed very soft. She stroked her pillowcase.

“You okay?” Seth asked.

Summer thought about the question before answering. “I guess so. I’m weirded out over this whole thing with J.T. You know?”

“I can kind of guess,” Seth said. He sat beside her.

“Plus, I halfway feel like I’m still in that cave,” Summer said. “Although the part that really sticks with me is the part
before
we found the cave. When we were down to just a few minutes of air…”

Summer took a very deep breath, filling her lungs to capacity. Seth did the same. Neither of them thought it was funny.

“Yeah. I don’t think I’ll forget that myself,” Seth said grimly. “Later, though—” He brightened a little. “Well, that had its nice parts.”

“Yes, it did.” Summer took his hand and raised it to her lips, kissing the bruised knuckles and pressing the palm against her face. “I guess it shouldn’t have taken that to get me to admit how much I love you. I mean, maybe actually being on the edge of death was not necessary.”

Seth laughed. “In the future let’s agree to avoid situations that involve dying. I’m totally opposed to dying.”

“It’s going to seem almost strange sleeping alone tonight,” Summer said.

“I could—” Seth began.

Summer shoved him playfully. “No, you couldn’t.”

He made a face. “Anyway, I have to go tell Trent what happened to his boat. The Coast Guard towed it back in, but it’s going to take some major work to repair.”

“You’ll fix it,” Summer said. “You’re good with your hands.” She kissed him deeply. “And you’re not so bad with your lips, either. Now go away. I need to brush my teeth six or eight times and take a hot bath and eat every single thing in the refrigerator. And then I’m just going to sleep.”

Seth stood. “Okay, I’ll go,” he said reluctantly. “Do what you said—sleep. Try not to think about all this with J.T.,” he advised. “You’ll think better when you’re rested and everything is back to normal again.”

Summer nodded agreement. “The question is, can I go back to normal again?”

“I know it will work out,” Seth said.

“Yeah?” Summer asked, unconvinced. “Suddenly my brother reappears in my life—maybe. I don’t know how it can work out. Not for everyone. Not for J.T.’s parents.” She started to say something else, then stopped herself.

“What?” Seth asked.

“Nothing, I guess. It’s just…last night, when we were in the cave, I saw something. Some
one.
I know this is going to sound totally insane, but it was this little boy, dressed all in white. And I’ve seen this boy in my dreams lately. Only, this wasn’t a dream. He was there, in the cave. I mean,
really
there.”

Seth looked worried for her. “Do you think it means something?”

“I don’t know,” Summer admitted. “He was in my dreams, and then he appeared in the cave.” She shrugged and shook her head dismissively. “I probably was dreaming.”

“What did this little boy do?”

“I asked him who he was, and he said he didn’t know. And then he took a little red ball he was holding and threw it up through the hole. The hole we escaped through.”

“Summer?” Seth said. “You are creeping me out.”

Summer laughed. “Okay, okay. It was just a dream. Forget about it.”

Seth kissed her on the forehead. “Get some sleep. And no dreams, unless they’re about me.”

Marquez slept too. She and J.T. had been up all night searching for Summer and Seth, and she was exhausted. But after only four hours of slumber she woke, fully alert.

She looked at her clock. It said 10:47. But whether that was a.m. or p.m., she wasn’t sure at first. She looked at the curtain drawn across the storefront window that was one wall of her room. No sunlight peeked around the edges. It was p.m.

She snapped on the lights, a series of shaded lamps positioned around her cavernous room. Over the years Marquez had covered the walls from floor to ceiling with a huge, brilliant, confused, intricate mural of pictures and graffiti. A spray-painted palm tree filled one corner, roots spread across the cement floor, branches fanned across the ceiling. A stylized mural showed her own family’s arrival in Florida in a fugitive rowboat from Cuba, complete with an infant Maria Esmeralda Marquez. A stunning sunset sprayed red and gold covered a field of graffitied names—from Orlando Bloom to Hillary Clinton; from Ms. Palmer, her eighth-grade history teacher, to Lloyd Cutler, the lawyer Marquez wanted to be like someday; from Kurt Cobain to Bob Marley. And then there were the other names: former boyfriends, school friends, family friends, her brothers, her parents—even the old man who thought he was Ernest Hemingway and swept the downtown sidewalks with an imaginary broom.

In the middle of the maze of names and images was a rough white rectangle—the place where she had painted over J.T.’s name.

Marquez knew she should go back to sleep. But she felt restless and agitated, as she sometimes did in the wake of disturbing dreams. She didn’t remember anything specific from her dreams, just a feeling of certain vivid colors and shapes.

Marquez knew that if she was going to be awake she ought to go upstairs and take a shower, wash her hair, watch some TV with her mom and dad and brothers. Or at least put on some clothes. But she didn’t feel like performing familiar rituals. She was fired up. She was jumpy. Her skin was crawling with electricity.

Marquez snapped her fingers and tossed her head in short, quick jerks. Music. That was the first thing.

Keane? No, too mellow. The Shins? No, way too mellow. No, something harder, something to fit her dangerous mood. Old Nirvana, maybe. She slid
Never-mind
into the CD player and hit Play.

She swept all the paint cans together and dumped them next to the wall, just below the blank white square. She realized she was breathing heavily, as if excited or exhausted, or maybe both. She was. Both. It happened sometimes, for no apparent reason, this sudden need to paint.

She snatched up a spray can and began shaking it, the rattling little ball a perfect counterpoint to the music pounding from the CD.

With quick strokes she directed the crimson spray against the white. As she did something came over Marquez, as it did from time to time. Her thinking, rationalizing mind simply went away for a while. Her brain became as blank as the patch of white. Her hands grabbed at paints, then threw them impatiently away and reached for some new color. The sweat began to run down her forehead, and her hair flew with each angry toss of her head. Fumes filled the room, barely controlled by the big exhaust fan that had been painted to look like a sunflower. Her eyes stung, the music pounded, her bare feet slipped on the concrete floor, and her hair and body were highlighted with careless reds and blues and golds. She dragged her ladder over, and her brushes and rags and sponges and every tool she had.

The music had long since stopped, the CD played out, when at last she was done. Hours had passed unnoticed. She stepped back to look at it—J.T. reborn. Huge letters, shaded for a 3-D effect so that they leaped out from the wall and picked up the glint of the mural sunset, each line woven through the entire tapestry of her walls by connections of color that insinuated themselves around each name, each picture.

The real J.T., as he was in her life: too much a part of the whole ever to be completely painted out again.

Marquez sat down on one of the red vinyl stools and hung her head. She cried, and in wiping away tears smeared new colors over her face—the same colors that made J.T.’s name. She had tried to paint him out. He was confusion and trouble, now more than ever.

When they’d started going out, he’d just been the cute cook at work. Then the simple, fun-loving guy had grown complicated. He’d learned he was not the biological son of his parents, though they had never told him directly. And he’d begun to wonder who he was and where he fit in. In the midst of it all, he’d grown angry and depressed. Who knew how he would respond to all this about being Summer’s brother Jonathan? Knowing J.T., it would not be a peaceful adjustment.

It had all been too much for Marquez. She wasn’t interested in complications and emotional problems. She was determined to keep her life orderly. She had her plan—one more year of high school, and sure, during that time she could be free and have fun and party. But then, she had determined, a different life would begin—college, law school, then a brilliant career in law. It was laid out. She already had the grades and the SAT scores.

Sixteen years ago her family had landed penniless in the United States, and the USA had taken them in, given them a chance and a hope they’d never had in Cuba. The family was dedicated to making good on that hope. Marquez was not going to be the weak link. She was not going to be the flake, the failure.

She looked around the room. The clock showed it was after two in the morning. The room reeked of fresh paint. She herself smelled of paint and sweat.

She saw herself reflected in the mirrors behind the counter—her hair and face and arms covered with paint, so that she seemed just another wild image, a part of the incredible wall behind her, like one of those 3-D hologram pictures you could stare at and then, whoa, a girl appeared.

“Very nice, Marquez,” she said aloud to her reflection. She was exhausted and angry with herself, as she usually was after working on the wall. “Just be sure when you go to Harvard you get a room with wallpaper.”

Lying back asleep, his chest and legs bare, his blond hair fanned out, his eyes closed but fluttering behind his eyelids, he swirled down and down, falling in a way that had once scared him but now seemed familiar. He was falling down that same whirlpool, landing in that same dusty corridor, sticky with cobwebs, dimly lit. He followed it, the way he always did, back through time, back and back, brushing the cobwebs aside.

He emerged in the grassy field again, smaller, as he always was in the dream. A tiny little boy, struck by how close the grass seemed, how near he was to the ground.

And there it was. The red ball.

And there she was. The sun. The bright ball of light that had begun to appear in his dream.

As he bent to pick up the ball, he noticed for the first time that he was wearing shorts. White shorts. And a white shirt.

Summer lay on her side, a sheet pulled up to her neck, one foot sticking out, her blond hair fanned across the pillow. Her breathing grew thready and uncertain, as it did when she dreamed.

For a while she was on the plane, listening yet again to the woman tell her tale of the tarot cards.

“But look,” Summer said to the woman, “I didn’t meet
three
guys. It was four.”

“No, no, no,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Just three. The other one isn’t yours. Pay attention.”

And then Summer was no longer on the airplane. She was no longer anyplace she knew. She was standing in a field, beside a swing set, only not standing. She was floating.

And there before her was the little boy in white. He was just picking up a red ball.

“I know you,” she said to the little boy.

It was then that for the first time in his dreams, the sun spoke to him. “I know you,” the sun said.

He held the ball in his hand. “I don’t know
you
,” he said. “I can’t. You aren’t here yet.”

“Oh,” the sun said. “I don’t like that ball.”

He nodded. “I know. It’s not the ball’s fault, though.”

“I guess not,” the sun said. “But…don’t throw it.”

He knew the sun was right. He knew what followed from throwing the ball. “I’ve tried not to,” he said. “But what
was
has to
be.
”

Summer wanted to reach out and stop him somehow, but she seemed not to have a body. She was just a warm circle of light.

The little boy threw the ball. It flew through the air and landed. It rolled and came to a stop by a fence.

“Don’t chase it,” she pleaded. She didn’t know why, but she felt dread filling her up, dimming the golden light she cast, chilling the warmth.

“I have to. I always have to,” the little boy said. “It’s the way it happened….”

“…I have to chase it. Maybe then I can find the truth,” he said. He smiled at the sun. The sun was worried, but she couldn’t help. She wasn’t really there. That much he knew. That she wasn’t real…not yet.

“Who are you?” the sun asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I have to chase the ball.”

Summer watched, helpless, as he chased the ball to the fence. Beyond the low fence, on the other side, was a car. The car door was open, and sitting there, sad beyond endurance, was a woman. A man stood by the fence.

The little boy in white stopped at the fence. He picked up the ball.

“No,” Summer whispered.

The man reached over the fence and lifted the boy up high over the fence.

In her mind, she heard the boy cry out in fear. And all the light was gone. She was no longer the sun, though she was still warm, a glowing circle of warmth, safe and secure. But she heard that echoing cry deep in her heart even as she emerged from darkness into a harsh light and heard for the first time her own shrill, tiny, newborn voice repeating her brother’s wail.

Summer cried out.

Her cry woke her. Her pillow was soaked with tears.

“Oh, jeez,” she moaned. “Stop eating before you go to bed, Summer.”

That was how it had happened, Summer realized. Sixteen years ago. Jonathan had been in the playground at the day care center, playing with his favorite chewed-up red ball. Then he had simply disappeared. Witnesses said they might have noticed a car parked by the fence. There might have been a man standing there. But no one could be sure.

Jonathan. J.T.? Had she really met him in her dream? Had any of it been real?

What kind of reality could you expect in a dream?

The night before, she’d been in the cave, with Seth sleeping beside her. She’d slept with her head resting on his chest, listening to the sound of his breathing. Now she felt so alone.

She hugged her pillow close. It just wasn’t the same. She felt abandoned, which she knew was dumb. She hated feeling abandoned. Hated it.

“I wish you were here, Seth,” she whispered.

Diana had often had difficulty sleeping, especially during the past year—the year that had come to be defined by the incident with Ross. She’d often lain awake, thinking of death. It had become a ritual—recalling the attempted rape; recalling in excruciating detail the moment when she’d realized that Adam was betraying her to protect his brother; remembering the feelings of self-loathing that had eaten at her, driving her again and again into the deep hole she thought would one day become her final experience of life.

But on this night she was not lying awake for those reasons. Not that depression was so far away—she could still feel its evil, seductive contours close by, calling softly to her. Depression had lured her often, even before the incident with Ross. That had merely lowered her defenses, made her vulnerable. And even now Diana was not on the verge of becoming a giddy optimist. She was not, she thought wryly, about to be reborn as Summer. But she
had
flushed the carefully hoarded pills down the toilet, flushed away her safety net of suicide.

She was restless. At first she’d fallen asleep easily, but she’d awakened an hour later, alert. Since then she’d lain there, tossing the covers on or off, fluffing pillows, trying every sleeping position—her back, her side, her other side, facedown. None with any success.

She replayed the events of the day till they became as familiar as old
Simpsons
reruns. The trip to the police. Showing the video. The statement she’d dictated and signed. The realization that her actions had sent a weird thrill through everyone in the FDLE office, part awe, part anticipation. They’d asked her to speak to no one, to let them decide when to take action. But she had come away certain that they would take action. By the time she’d left, the number of FDLE personnel had tripled—men staring at her, not in the usual way at all, but as if she were some rare, dangerous animal.

It was interesting, being dangerous. It made her smile in the darkness. But at the same time she felt uneasy. Not afraid so much as vaguely nauseated.

“I’m not going to get any sleep, am I?” she muttered.

She answered her own question by climbing out of bed. She retrieved the gauzy white robe she’d left on her chair, slipped it on, and went to the sliding glass door that opened onto her private balcony.

The night air was warmer than the air-conditioning by at least ten degrees. It had to be close to eighty, with humidity so thick it sparkled in the air like steam.

She went to the railing and rested both her hands on the wood. The moon peeked around a drifting cumulus. Most of the sky was clear, starlight twinkling through the damp air. The water of the bay was calm, as it almost always was, just tiny ripples to reflect the moonlight. Across the bay was the other side of Crab Claw Key—a few porch lights shining here and there; someone who insisted on shining spotlights on a tall palm; and down near the point, the green light that marked the end of the Merricks’ dock.

Suddenly Diana felt uncomfortable. She felt as if…as if she were being watched. She glanced toward the Merrick estate. Surely there was no way they could see her from that distance—

She heard a slight rustling in the bushes below. Diana peered through the gloom. “Hey, who’s there?”

No answer for a moment. Then a less surreptitious movement, someone stepping back from the bushes, stepping into the moonlight on the lawn.

“Don’t be scared, it’s just me.”

It took Diana a moment to place the voice. She’d only heard it once before. One meeting, every single detail of which had stayed fresh in her mind. “Diver?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I wasn’t sneaking around or anything.”

Diana considered this. If he wasn’t sneaking around, what exactly was he doing? Her heart was pounding. Her throat was tight. If she didn’t know better, if Diana had not known herself to be cool and removed and not even slightly interested in a flake like Diver…well, if she hadn’t known all those things, she’d have thought she was excited to see him.

“Wait there, I’ll come down,” Diana said. “I don’t want Mallory—my mother—to wake up.”

“I could come up there,” Diver said. His voice sounded strange, almost shaky. Probably just the strain of whispering.

“The door’s locked downstairs,” Diana said. “I’d have to come down to let you in, anyway.”

“No problem,” Diver said.

To Diana’s amazement, he planted a foot on the trellis that covered the outside wall of the family room, climbed to the top, levered himself up onto the roof of the family room, and walked across the sloping Spanish tiles to a point just above her balcony.

He stood there above her, wearing, as always, nothing but a pair of trunks. Summer had told her Diver never wore anything more. When his original trunks had been ripped, Diana, Summer, and Marquez had gone shopping to buy him a more complete wardrobe, but by the time they’d returned, he’d bummed an old pair of Seth’s trunks and now seemed to think all his needs were met.

And, in fact, looking at him now, arm and shoulder and chest outlined in moonlight, Diana could see no good reason why he should be wearing anything more than he was.

“Come on down,” Diana said.

He squatted at the edge of the roof and jumped lightly down beside her.

Diana was suddenly very aware of the sheerness of her robe, and the way the humidity had made it cling here and there. She backed away a few feet, making it look like a natural desire to gaze off toward the open water at the bay’s mouth.

Diver seemed content to let the silence stretch. Diana considered going inside, finding some less flagrant thing to wear. But then, Diver always said he wasn’t interested in girls. That’s what Summer reported, anyway. He said that girls would disturb his inner peace, his
wa.

It would serve him right if she did disturb his
wa.
Having him this close by seemed to be disturbing
hers.

“Summer’s okay,” Diver said after a while. “I thought I should tell you.”

“What do you mean?”

“They found her.”

“What do you mean? Was she lost?”

“Yes,” he said.

Diana shook her head. Clearly this was supposed to mean something, but she didn’t have the slightest idea what. And she was a little annoyed to be standing there discussing Summer.

“Then I’m glad they found her,” Diana said, making a mental note to ask Summer what had been going on.

Silence fell again. But now Diana realized she’d moved closer to Diver, and the obscure agitation she’d felt lying in bed was worse. She felt irritated. She plucked at the front of her robe to keep it from clinging.

“You know, I think Summer is kind of into Seth,” Diana said. The words were out of her mouth several seconds before she began to think about them. “I mean…” Okay, now what
did
she mean?

“I like Seth,” Diver said. “He’s the one who gave me these.” He pointed at his trunks.

“So you’re not jealous?” Diana said, digging the hole deeper.

He looked at her blankly. Then a slow, dawning smile.

He was beautiful, Diana realized, feeling inexplicably demoralized by the realization.

“It’s not that way with Summer,” Diver said shyly.

“Yeah, I know,” Diana said dismissively. “Girls disturb your
wa.
” Beautiful eyes. Beautiful lips. Even his hands…She wouldn’t mind holding his hand. The thought shocked her. Because it wasn’t as if she was thinking with her usual casual detachment that she would like to hold his hand—no, it was as if she was suddenly entirely focused, with absolute intensity, on the single idea of touching him.

“Some more than others,” Diver said.

“What?” Diana managed to ask.

“Some girls disturb me more than others,” he clarified.

Diana struggled for just the right thing to say. Something clever but not too coy. Something normal-sounding, even though she was feeling distinctly abnormal. What she wanted to say was, What girl? Summer? Marquez? Me? Hillary Clinton? Did I mention me? What she did say was, “Uh-huh. Yeah. I guess that would be true. So I guess you’d just want to stay away from that type of girl.”

He nodded solemnly. “Yes.” Then he grinned impishly. “I suppose you think I’m crazy, right?”