Ferocity Summer (13 page)

The night sky over the lake was dark. There were no stars or moon. The sky had clouded over and threatened rain. The whole setting, which had seemed so bright, so delicious only a few hours before, had now grown hopelessly bleak.

“I've got to go back,” I said.

“Screw your mother,” Willow said.

“Screw yours. I need to get to a bathroom.”

“Just hurl over the side, like Prince Charming.”

“No, not that. It's the other end.”

“Oh shit,” Willow muttered.

“Bingo.”

“Should we wake Tigue?”

He'd fallen into a heap at the front of the boat. He looked almost dead. I no longer felt any attraction to him. It wasn't just his hair, which had grown dull and unhealthy-looking, or his skin, which now glowed in the dim light with a sickly sheen of sweat. Even someone with as little sense as I had could take a hint when it was shoved down her throat—Tigue really didn't have a single quality to recommend him. I'd reached the same conclusion that Harvard had, and like that Ivy League institution, only accepted the obvious when no other possibility remained.

“I don't even think he'll be able to stand up,” I said. “It's not hard. You could do it.”

“Maybe you should,” Willow said.

The air had turned to mist. It would turn to a drenching rain soon. If we were lucky, it wouldn't be a thunderstorm.

“I'm not sure I can move,” I said. “I really have to go.”

“Fuck,” Willow said. She got up and walked to the steering wheel. “I don't even know how to get back.”

“That way, I think,” I said, pointing vaguely toward the right, but it was just a guess. I didn't have a clue. The day's events were nothing but a blur.

Willow started up the boat, played around with the controls, and began to get us moving at a snail's pace in a direction that may or may not have been where we had come from. My stomach groaned.

This Summer

I
knew for a fact that the weave pattern from the waiting room chair had permanently imprinted itself into my butt. I worked on memorizing the entire contents of the three-month-old
Time
magazine on my lap. My mother checked her watch again.

“What the hell is taking so long?” she demanded of no one in particular. I saw the receptionist look over at us, then quickly turn away. “We had an appointment for 3:30. It's now 4:22.”

“Maybe something came up,” I said.

“Yeah,” Mom said, “like a paying client. This is ridiculous. You know she doesn't keep paying clients waiting this long. You know that, right? This is wrong. I should write a letter.”

“If you want to leave,” I said, “just go. You don't even need to be here. I'll call you when I'm done.”

“Oh, no, I don't think so. Somebody's got to give a shit about your welfare, and it's clear I can't rely on either you or this piece-of-crap lawyer.”

I tossed the
Time
magazine down on the table and picked up a dated copy of
Newsweek
. It had an article about teenage drug use with a special checklist for parents to use in determining whether or not their child might be on drugs. It included such symptoms as increased truancy and tardiness to classes, a drop in grades, behavior problems in school, dropping old friends and the sudden influence of a new crowd, appearing listless or hungover, more combativeness at home, and personality changes. Willow could have been the teenage drug use poster child—there wasn't a symptom she didn't exhibit. Not that I needed the stupid list to tell me what I already knew about my best friend; it was just that, as I reread the list of warning signals, I realized that according to the checklist, I too was a dead ringer for a drug-using teenager. I hastily shut the magazine before my mother's prying eyes could wander over to the incriminating page.

A few seconds later, S. Louise Killdaire appeared in a rumpled celadon green suit with a tortoiseshell hair-clip holding back her disobedient mane of hair.

“I apologize for the wait,” she said as she led us back to her office. “It's been a really hectic day.”

I waited for my mother to start bitching, but she kept her mouth shut. Apparently she'd thought better of giving Killdaire a piece of her mind. Maybe she really did give a shit about my welfare.

“So, how's your summer been?” Killdaire asked when we were all seated in her office.

“Fine,” I said. My mother glared at me.

“Quiet and uneventful, I hope,” Killdaire said.

“Sure,” I said.

My mother rolled her eyes. “I think we should look at this from a worst case scenario perspective,” she said.

“I hardly think—” Killdaire began.

“Has the prosecution offered us a deal?”

Strands of Killdaire's hair had flown loose from her hair clip. She swatted at them and tried to smooth them down with her hands to no avail.

“While it's purely your decision, I don't think that's necessary,” she said. “We've got the makings of a good defense.”

“We've got nothing,” my mother insisted.

“Priscilla and Willow were two underaged girls who were fed a potentially lethal amount of alcohol by an adult with a previous drunk driving conviction.”

“Oh, I'm sure he held them down and forced it down their throats.”

“Ms. Davis, the law is very clear on the issue of serving alcohol to minors. Both Tigue Anderson and his parents displayed a significant amount of irresponsibility and we only need to show a jury that—”

“Your brilliant defense strategy is to go after the Andersons? Honey, their attorney makes more in an hour than you do in a week.”

Killdaire took a deep breath. She looked over at me, the faintest hint of a smile curling up the ends of her mouth as if we shared some sort of secret. I didn't smile back.

“Priscilla may have made some bad decisions in her life,” she said calmly, “but it's going to take some big guns to convince a jury that an innocent sixteen-year-old girl is single-handedly responsible for the tragic accident that occurred last summer.”

“Innocent, my ass,” my mother said.

I cleared my throat. Killdaire and my mother both turned to me.

“Look,” I said, “isn't it possible that this might never go before a jury?”

“Priscilla, are you saying you want to look into the possibility of settling with the prosecution?” Killdaire used a different voice when she talked to me. She spoke softly and gently, as if I were an animal or maybe a child.

“Well, I mean, what if there was another way of avoiding a trial, another sort of deal I could cut?”

“Honey, I'm not sure what you mean,” Killdaire said.

“I mean … ” I began. I looked over at my mother, who seemed simultaneously annoyed and expectant. I looked at Killdaire. At any second, she might fall right off the edge of her seat.

Sherman, like a popularity-obsessed high school student, spent a lot of time worrying about what other people thought of him. Most of all, he wanted his wife and his kids to be proud of him. In letters written to them he begged them to accept his actions as the best he could do in the circumstances. He wanted them to know he'd always tried to do the right thing. Of course, in one letter to his wife he wrote, “I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash—and it may be well that we become so hardened.”

I thought of those sitting in judgment of me. Not the not-yet-seated jury, but those who'd judged me my whole life: my mother, my peers, the Andersons, the S. Louise Killdaires of the world. A part of me wanted to explain about Christian Calambeaux, to somehow prove to them that I wasn't completely helpless, but no matter what I said, I was going to make myself look even worse than I already did.

“Never mind,” I said.

“No, Priscilla, it's okay,” Killdaire replied in her baby-animal voice. “What is it? What's your idea?”

“Yeah,” my mother said. “Out with it. What is your brilliant plan?”

How could I even begin to explain that I was working for the FBI and it might give me a ticket out of the trial? It all seemed so ridiculous. What was Christian going to do for me? What
could
he do for me?

That glimmer of hope was starting to look more and more like a mirage. I was kidding myself. I didn't have a chance. I'd misread the strength of the enemy, and now found myself surrounded.

“They're going to make me look really bad, aren't they?” I asked. “At the trial, they're going to make me look like some kind of monster.”

“It won't be that bad,” Killdaire said. “I promise.” She said this in her special voice, though, so I didn't believe her.

Last Summer

R
ain washed down my face. I opened my eyes. I'd dozed off. I wasn't sure for how long. The rain had begun to come down hard in big, angry drops. They pelted my bare skin. I was freezing. I felt around for something to pull over myself. I found a damp towel and pulled it over my shoulders. It didn't warm me up, but it kept the rain from hitting so hard.

I had the feeling I hadn't been out for too long. Things were pretty much the same—Tigue was still a lump at the front of the boat. Randy was still passed out, and Willow was piloting the craft through the rough water at a snail's pace.

“Are we there yet?” I asked.

“Frodo lives,” Willow muttered. “Come up here and help me, dammit.”

I pushed myself onto my feet and a sharp pain turned my insides to burning fire. I'd eaten only a cheese Danish that morning, then washed it down with far too much alcohol while baking in the summer sun. I didn't need a bathroom, I needed a hospital.

Still, I shuffled toward Willow. We weren't moving fast at all—Willow was driving cautiously. It was the practical thing to do, but I was in no shape to think practically. I had to get off that boat. We could afford to speed it up. No one else would be out on the lake in this weather, and as I made my way to the steering wheel, this seemed true. I didn't see a single boat.

Willow was crying. Tears slid quietly down her face. I still don't know what she was crying about. She probably didn't know either. It could have just been the alcohol, or maybe she was desperate to get back to shore and unable to find the way. Later, some time in the dim hours of early morning as I lay in bed trying to sleep, all I could see in my head was Willow's face with the tears running down it.

“I can't see shit,” Willow said. “And I don't know where the fuck we are.”

The darkness obscured everything. I imagined I'd have to use some long-buried instinct to navigate my way back to the marina, any marina. It didn't really matter at this point which one. Then I realized that the darkness was more than darkness. A layer of fog hung over the lake, making it impossible to see even a few feet in front of the boat.

Later, I knew exactly what we should have done. We should have stopped the boat, dug out the air horn that every boater keeps stored under the seat cushions for just such an occasion, and blasted away on it until someone came to our aid. They would have towed us back to shore or at least led the way. We would have gone back to Tigue's, slept off our drunk, awoke in the morning with vicious hangovers, and laughed halfheartedly about the whole thing on Sunday afternoon. Ha, ha, ha. End of story. Amen. This is the rationality that hindsight and sobriety produces.

My logical mind, however, was fuzzed over by booze and the raging wildfire that engulfed my insides. Desperation fueled my thinking. I needed to get back to shore. I needed to get back to shore
now
.

So I pushed up the speed of the boat, going from leisurely to quicker to fast to really fast. We pounded along the water. The breeze numbed our damp bodies. Rain thrashed us. Beside me, Willow clung to the boat as we headed in a direction that I could only hope was where we had come from, more or less. Maybe if Willow had told me to slow down, I would have, but she didn't. She too was desperate to get back too.

The water was rougher than it had been earlier. The boat was thrown up and down. The bouncing woke Randy, who came to with some confused mumbling.

“What's wrong?” he asked. Then, “I don't feel so good.”

“Shut up!” Willow snapped, and he did.

Instinct, or maybe some form of luck, had helped me guide the boat in the direction of the shore. I still had no idea where we were, and squinted into the fog. I saw it dead on—just floating harmlessly in the water, waiting for us, it seemed. In the fog, in my drunkenness, I thought it was a rowboat. I imagined it to be a rowboat, its prow facing us, its two passengers staring at us with startled expressions on their faces. I saw all this. I really did. I jerked the wheel hard to the right. The speedboat responded slowly, then turned at last and sent up a spray of water that landed on what turned out to be nothing but a buoy. I was trembling and having trouble breathing. Fear held me tightly in its grasp. More than ever, I wanted to be back home asleep in my cozy bed instead of here.

“Slow down,” someone said. I'm still not sure who. I couldn't remember how to slow down. I clung to the wheel tight enough to make my fingers numb.

Willow saw it before I did. She said something, swore, and reached for the wheel. I was holding on so tightly that her feeble attempt to jerk it toward her did nothing.

“I don't feel good,” Randy said again. Willow didn't tell him to shut up, but it didn't matter.

Tigue picked that moment to awaken from his comatose state. He rose to a sitting position and said, “Jesus Christ! We're all going to die!” He was wrong.

When I saw the boat, it was no more than a body's length away. I jerked the wheel, but it made no difference at that point. I couldn't slow down because I couldn't remember how to. The prow of our boat was aimed directly at the mid-section of the other boat's port side. Someone on the other boat screamed.

That scream still rings in my ears when I wake from my nightmares. They, too, had not seen us until it was too late. Our boat crashed into theirs at full speed.

Chaos.

Willow and I were thrown to the front of the boat, where Tigue had been only moments before. Randy and Tigue were thrown totally off the boat by the force of the impact. We were rocking in the choppy water but no longer racing forward. The boat's racing days were over.

I looked behind me to find the other boat, but I couldn't see it. Then I realized that the two white things sinking below the water line were the two halves of it. I could see this, but I refused to comprehend it. It hadn't happened. It couldn't have happened.

Around me, I heard shouts, cries.

A man kept shouting, “Mary! Mary!” over and over again.

An air horn blew.

We were near the marina, and the sound of the impact had carried across the water. Other boats moved in to help. The passengers from the other boat were pulled from the water, as were Randy and Tigue. Someone came aboard our boat and found Willow and me. A man with fireman arms carried us onto another boat and drove us to the dock. On the shore, emergency medical technicians lined up like vultures. I saw Randy strapped to a stretcher. Tigue stood in the shadows, running a finger ceaselessly through his overgrown locks. Someone handed Willow a wool blanket, and we draped it over ourselves as we sat on the ground.

The man still yelled for Mary, but she would never answer him.