Rites of Spring (21 page)

“You’re too smart to think you can get away with telling me what to do!”

“No,” he said. “I know that really well. You’ve made it perfectly clear since the moment we met. The most I can hope for is convincing you to listen to reason.” He let go of my arm, appeared to wrestle with himself for a moment, then spoke. “I didn’t mean to scare you so badly, Amy.”

What?

He ran a hand through his hair, looked everywhere but at me. “That night, at the tomb. I didn’t know how bad it would be.”

At the initiation, when he stuck me in a coffin, flooded it with a Super Soaker and threatened to dump it in a pool. “That was ages ago.”

“Didn’t seem like it yesterday. You looked just the same. Terrified.”

“A lot wetter.”

“I’m sorry.” He lifted his gaze to mine. “I’m really sorry, but I can’t see you—you can’t imagine how I felt on that boat. Like I’d made it worse for you.” His eyes were filled with guilt, and all of a sudden I understood that it wasn’t just me he was angry at. My going overboard was a reminder of how he’d hurt me last spring. “You want to thank me for jumping in after you yesterday? Do me a favor and take off your shoes.”

Damn him. I took off my shoes. Poe was down to his bathing suit, but I hadn’t worn mine. Not that it would matter if all I was doing was wading. My shorts were of the gym variety. I glared at him through the sunlight and reached up to tighten my ponytail. Thus girded for battle, I stood. “How deep is it?”

“Depends on the tide. Your clothes are going to get wet.”

Well, I wasn’t stripping down to my panties! I pulled my shirt off, hoping that the gray sports bra wouldn’t turn translucent in water.

“Would you feel better holding my hand?”

“Over my dead body.”

“Suit yourself.” I watched him walk down into the water, all black hair and broad, winter-pale shoulders. He still wore the tiny sack-turned-backpack, suspended from those shoulders by two small straps. This was the worst date ever. I considered shouting that to him and taking off for the forest.

But instead, I followed him into the water. The sand shifted and squished below my feet, and the water was still plenty chilly. A few feet out, I was only up to my knees, but the ground fell away swiftly after that. “P—Jamie!” I called.

He waded back toward me. “I’m starting to think my name is Pajamie.”

“Your name should be Pajerky. You said it wasn’t deep.”

“Pajerky?” He gave me a skeptical look. “That’s Pathetic.”

“We’ll see how smug you are once I’m on dry land.”

He took my hands in his wet ones, started walking backward. “Come on. I got you.”

The water rose over my thighs and crept up the hem of my gym shorts. It slipped over my crotch and I rose onto my tippy-toes, but still, Poe drew me forward.

“Slower,” I said.

“Slower is harder,” he said.

“Do you say that to all the girls?”

He ignored that. “You feel the cold more.”

“And again I ask…”

We were more than halfway to the sandbar by this time. The water lapped against my stomach, then my rib cage. I got another shock when it hit my elbows, and tightened my grip on Poe’s hands, sliding my fingers up his forearms. Two steps later, it covered my breasts.

“This is deep enough,” I said. “I can’t go any farther.”

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll rest here a minute.” And true to his word, he stopped. I spent the time trying to slow my heartbeat. He watched me, his face calm and inscrutable. (This wasn’t doing anything for my heartbeat.) Standing as we were, with Poe in deeper water, we were the same height. The tips of his shoulders peeked above the surface, giving him the appearance of a classical statue bust. Several times I almost said,
Take me back.
And several times I stopped.

“I’m ready.” I said.

“Whatever you want.” And he took another step backward.

I panicked. I couldn’t touch! “Stop! Stop!” I cried, kicking with my feet. My hands slid back down to his fingertips as my toes searched for the sandy bottom.

“Amy, I’ve got you.”

“Please!”

He sighed and guided me back into shallow water.

“See!” I seethed. “I can’t do this. Do you think you’re the only one who has tried? What’s next? Showing me how to blow bubbles?” I folded my arms across my chest and turned toward land.

He bobbed close to me, his brow furrowed. “What if I carry you?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Are you going to spend the rest of your life like this?”

“If necessary.”

“That’s tragic.” He swam a little circle around me.

I scowled. “Shall I tell you what’s tragic about the way you live your life?”

“You don’t have to.” He rose before me, dripping water down his chest, and extended his arms. “I’ve already got a pretty good idea what you think. Please. Give me one more chance. I promise that I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re in charge.”

He had no idea what he was asking. Neither did I, for that matter, but I put my hands in his anyway. This time he slid his hands up my arms until he held me just above my elbows.

“Put your arms out, like an airplane.” And back we went, into the deep, Poe giving me instructions every five seconds:

“Don’t think about where your feet are.” Easier said than done.

“Breathe in. Your body is more buoyant than seawater. Can’t you feel yourself floating?” Um…no?

“Flap, like a bird.” More like a fish on a hook.

“Cup your hands.”

“Keep breathing.”

“Kick.”

Enough! “Stop…telling me…what…to do!” I hissed. I reached my foot back down, felt nothing and freaked. “Ack, take me back!”

“Amy—”

I made one more desperate try for the ground with the tip of my toe, but it wasn’t there. So I reached for the next best thing. Poe. I wrapped my arms around his neck, my legs around his waist, and held tight.

“Uh, hi,” he said in my ear as I clung to him.

“Take me back!” I cried.

“Amy, you can touch here.” I pulled away slightly and saw that it was true. The water only reached to Poe’s chest. “You were swimming. That’s why you didn’t feel the ground.” Beneath the water, his hands slid around and rested on my hips.

Maybe it was the adrenaline, but those butterflies were back. And I wasn’t moving, wasn’t letting go of him. But, considering the position of his arms, he didn’t want me to.

“You did this on purpose,” I said in an accusing tone.

“You’re right,” he said. “I arranged all of this so you’d jump on me. I’m diabolical.”

“You’re a Digger.”

“As are you,” he replied.

Yes, and therefore capable of being every bit as manipulative. Of stripping down and getting in the water and finding the perfect way of creating proximity, regardless of my fear, regardless of the water’s depth. I thought about all the times I’d wanted to turn back, and didn’t.
I’d
done this on purpose. It made no sense to have reached for him otherwise. It made no sense not to let go now.

I was in charge. I was fully rational. And I wasn’t an idiot.

So I kissed him.

12.

On the Beach

This is what I remember about that moment:

1)
Poe tasted like salt and suntan oil.

2)
His hands stiffened on my hips. Not tighter, not looser, just…frozen.

3)
The water made little squelching sounds as it flowed between our bodies.

4)
It took a second or so for him to start kissing me back.

5)
The kiss went on a lot longer than a second or so.

Poe finally pulled away and we blinked at each other in the sunlight. Quickly, I disentangled my legs from around his waist, but before I could let go of him completely, he’d covered my hands with his own. “Wait.”

And then we were kissing again, only this time our bodies were pressed together, and I could feel the silky sensation of his wet bathing suit on my legs, could feel the skin of his stomach rubbing against mine, and I realized he had his hand splayed against my back, holding me tight as the water swirled around us, and when I came up for air I saw that we were floating, that Poe had taken the opportunity to push off from the sandy bottom into the deeper arc of the lagoon, and to take me with him.

And for once, I didn’t freak out that I couldn’t touch the bottom. He pulled through the water with one hand and both legs, and I must have been holding my breath or something because I was floating along with him, skimming between the surface of the water and the planes of his chest.

Finally, he straightened, and once again, my toes sank into wet sand. I dropped my hands to my sides. Poe was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling in the water, and I wasn’t exactly calm myself. And since neither of us seemed to have any inclination to speak, I just walked up past him onto the sandbar.

The contrast between the coolness of the lagoon and the sun-warmed sand was extreme. I wrung droplets out of my hair and walked to the far end of the sandbar, looking out over the waves to the other island. As promised, I could see colorful tents clustered on the shore, the smoke from a cooking fire, the movement of tiny figures. Were they really conspiracy theorists? Were they watching me now? And if so, what did they think of the utterly pedestrian sight of a girl in a sports bra and gym shorts and a boy in a bathing suit kissing in the Florida surf? How could they spin that into their fevered fantasies of a New World Order?

And could they provide me with any interpretation I could use?

Poe joined me, still silent, then pulled off his backpack and dug around inside. He handed me a bottle of water, slightly warmed by the sun. The label had turned gummy in the sea, but I drank happily, washing away the flavor of salt. Funny how sweet plain water can be.

I passed the water back, swapping with Poe for a plastic baggie filled with grapes. I nibbled on the fruit, still tasting brine and a slight grittiness from the sand on my fingers. Poe sat down, and I joined him, side by side. Our hips touched, our arms brushed.

It no longer felt awkward not to speak. Rather, it seemed like a competition. The first person to say something would be responsible for putting it all into context.

I kept my mouth filled with grapes instead.

Poe lay back on the sand and I followed suit, only to discover he’d extended an arm for me to use as a pillow. I turned my face toward him and found he was looking at me, too. The chorus of
Oh-my-God-what-are-you-doing
s that had taken up the bulk of my consciousness for the last few minutes faded away. I wanted to kiss him again, so I did.

I don’t know how long we lay like that, sharing grapes and kisses. Water evaporated from my skin in the sunlight, and heat seeped into my flesh, driving off the chill of winter and the trauma of February. Against the elemental forces of earth and sea and Poe, Eli was a chimera. Who cared about fellowship applications, about society feuds, about the Ivory Tower or the even more fantastical “real world” that awaited when it crumbled? The very idea of debating Book 3, Canto 2 of Spenser, or doing yet another problem set on the reactions that cause ozone layer depletion, or writing Eli’s thirtieth paper on the role of Persephone in feminist literature seemed ludicrous. Pointless. The life of the mind held not the slightest fascination for me.

Poe’s skin was warm and smooth, and all I could hear was the sound of the waves. I wasn’t overthinking. For once, I wasn’t thinking at all.

Spring
Break
. I get it now. Only took four years.

More time passed, and my brain started up again, but slowly, with none of the frenetic, stressful ferocity of its usual pace, just softly batting around bizarre contemplations and idle curiosities. One flitted to the surface.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Poe was running his hand up and down the length of my arm. At the sound of my voice, he stilled. “Okay?” he said warily.

“Why do we have Nazi china?”

He burst out laughing, and I was so relaxed, it took me a moment to realize why. He thought I was going to ask about
this
.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “I find it really creepy myself. It’s supposed to be some sort of war trophy from some old patriarch, but it’s gross. Let’s go smash it.”

I looked at him, eyebrows raised, but he wasn’t kidding. His eyes sparkled.

“Seriously. Turn the whole collection into dust. Or better yet, we’ll sell it off to skinheads at high profit and donate it all to…the Anti-Defamation League or something.”

“Salt would not be happy.”

“We’ll blame the conspiracy theorists.” He grinned and cocked his head toward the other island.

I shook my head, incredulous. “What about tradition?”

“Screw tradition.”

This was
the
Poe, right? “You’ve gone crazy.”

He thought about that for a moment. “You’re right. I have. You’re contagious.” He leaned over me and kissed me quick and it may have been the sun, but I think my entire body blushed. We’d wound up talking about
this
after all. But lying beneath Poe was another new sensation, and I devoted most of my attention to that for the next few minutes.